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COPYRIGHT, 1923 

BY B. C. FORBES PUBLISHING CO. 



THE PLIMPTON PRESS 
NORWOOD'MASS’U'S'A 


MAR 16 1923 

©C1A704184 

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£)eliicate5 to 

SNUG 

WHO, MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE, 

MAKES MY LIFE BOTH RICH AND COMFORTABLE 



<iA Business Man*s Prayer 

O God, give me the wisdom which will enable 
me to do the square thing. Teach me to be gentle 
in the expression of the strength you have placed in 
my hands. 

Make me always remember that truthfulness, 
sincerity, cleanliness and directness are the tools 
used by those who have become the Master Servants, 
and train me to use these efficiently in my daily work. 

Clear my vision so that never will I lose sight of 
the ideal toward which I am working. Visit me 
with failures so that from them I may learn the 
lessons failures alone can teach, but, I pray, bless 
me with successes which will prove my efficiency 
in carrying out your commands. 

From enemies and people who are not on the 
square I do not ask to be delivered, but I do ask that 
I be given a few friends to whom may be entrusted 
all that is in my mind and heart. 

Let me master the art of using all my spiritual, 
mental and physical powers in the service of my 
neighbors — expressing all that is finest and richest 
in me fully and completely. Open to me channels 
which will enable me to pour myself into the work 
of the world. 

Cvii] 


Foreword 


Make me eager to stand before men and, fired 
with the desire to help others, say to them: “ Here 
I am; take me and do with me what you will ” — 
always daring to trust them to take only that from 
me which will truly help them. 

I would ask, too, that I be inspired to send from 
my heart that greatest of all prayers: “ Thy Will 
Be Done,” thus proclaiming my faith in a Great Ex¬ 
ecutive who is all-wise, all-loving, all-just, and who 
so manages the universe that all things work together 
as he would have them. 

This, God, is a business man’s prayer. 




I 


C viii 3 



The Silver Lining or 
Sunshine on the Business Trail 


We Get What We Are 

I AM writing this at the close of a rainy holiday 
afternoon. Snug is singing at her work of preparing 
Welsh rarebit for our evening meal. Looking 
through the big window -facing the lake I see the 
raindrops glistening on the pine needles. An occa¬ 
sional yelp is heard from the garage where Mashie 
and Niblick, our two collie pups, have their home. 
Possibly they, too, want something to eat.- In the 
sun-room Peter, the canary, is playing with a tiny 
bell suspended from the top of his cage. Two bare¬ 
foot boys are walking along the dirt road which 
borders the town land, splashing through the puddles. 
Puddles on a country road offer adventures enough 
for healthy boys. In the town the church bells are 
ringing. A bird is singing in the oak. There is 
much harmony in the place. 

' Sitting here in the midst of this peacefulness I 
have been thinking that Snug and I are very wealthy. 

CO 





The Silver Lining or 


It is true, of course, that we have comparatively 
little money, but for all that we are millionaires — 
millionaires without millions. We have a comfort¬ 
able home in a beautiful little town, all we need to 
eat and drink and wear, and a few friends who 
bear with us through the years and teach us so much 
about the magical wonders of neighborliness. So 
much for the material substance. Possibly you 
ask: “ What more can anyone want who has food, 
clothing and shelter? ” 

Apparently people can want much more. Most'of 
us have known millionaires who had no happiness 
and some of us have been privileged to know home¬ 
less wanderers who carried upon their faces the look 
of joy which only those wear who live in heaven. 
The more we learn about the people of the world 
the surer we are that the possession of material things 
does not always mean the possession of happiness. 
And is it not happiness that we all want? 

When we read the writings of the wise men of 
the ages we learn that all men consciously or un¬ 
consciously seek happiness. Happiness is their final 
goal. They may work and slave to get fame and 
wealth. They may make great sacrifices for love. 
But always they want happiness — and so few, ap¬ 
parently, know where to find it. 

You remember the old tale. The unhappy king 
had been told by the wise old man that happiness 

1:2] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


would not be his until he put on the shirt of a per¬ 
fectly happy man. Immediately couriers were sent 
abroad throughout the world to find a perfectly happy 
man and secure from him his shirt. Apparently 
such a man could not be found and the messengers 
returned to the court unsuccessful. Once more they 
were sent out and once more they returned unsuc¬ 
cessful. One day the unhappy king and some of his 
courtiers were walking near the palace grounds when 
they heard the joyous laughter of a man who was 
lying on his back in a clover field, kicking his heels 
in the air. 

Instantly the king sent a member of the court to 
the man to ask him questions. “ Why are you laugh¬ 
ing so loudly.? ” asked the courtier. 

“ Because I am so happy,” answered the man, 
giving his heels another kick skyward. 

“ Are you perfectly happy? ” 

“ Why of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be? ” 

“ If you are perfectly happy,” said the courtier, 
“ I demand your shirt in the name of the king.” 

At that the man roared with again with laughter. 
“Yo! Ho! ” he shouted, “I haven’t any shirt.” 

I was talking not long ago with one of my 
neighbors who, having retired from business, is 
spending his declining years in doing what he can 
to beautify his town. His spirit is extraordinarily 
youthful. I asked him why he was so cheerful. 

[3] 



The Stiver Lining or 


‘‘ Because,” he answered, ‘‘ I have so many bless¬ 
ings to enjoy.” 

What blessings? ” I asked, thinking that he 
might mention his most valuable possessions. 

He chuckled as he replied: “One great blessing 
is our pure drinking water. I never drink a glass of 
water without thanking God for the great privilege 
I am permitted to enjoy. I shudder when I think 
of having to go without water to drink. Just being 
able to slake my thirst makes me a fortunate man.” 

“ And what else? ” 

“ Another joy comes to me on the evening of the 
day when my wife changes the sheets on our bed. 
When I slip in between those smooth, cool sheets I 
wiggle my toes for joy. I stretch out and exclaim, 
‘ Can there be anywhere in the world greater lux¬ 
ury than this! ’ ” 

You see he has mastered the art of getting his 
happiness out of the simplest things of life. 

Then there is a corporation lawyer whose yea 
and nay are accepted as final by his multimillionaire 
clients. His home life is a life of perfect harmony. 
To see him and his wife together is to see two lovers 
to whom life is a glorious adventure. He explains 
that his home success is due to a rule he made when 
he married at the age of thirty. Already he had 
achieved enviable success in his profession. He had 
been permitted to see into the home life of many 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


a wealthy client and he knew how much unhappiness 
was hidden beneath the smiles of his hosts. 

“ I promised myself that I would not neglect my 
wife and home for my business,” he explained. “ I 
had seen so many homes wrecked because husbands 
were too busy earning money to pay the attention 
to their wives that their wives had every right to 
expect. I promised myself that I would not make 
the same mistake. From the beginning of our 
married life I have considered my wife to be my 
most important client. Saturday afternoons, Sun¬ 
days and holidays are sacred to her. It would be 
so easy for me to allow myself to drift into the 
habit of playing golf every week end with impor¬ 
tant men of affairs and excuse myself on the score 
of doing it for the sake of business. Instead, I 
work in our garden, entertain friends at home, or go 
off with my wife on some trip that she will enjoy. 
Other clients pay me money. My wife pays me 
in happiness. That is why I regard her as my pre¬ 
ferred client.” 

Henry D. Thoreau knew happiness in his little $28 
hut on the shores of Walden Pond, but Napoleon was 
miserable even in the days of his great Italian cam¬ 
paign when one victory followed upon another and 
he had no hint of failure. One of my happiest 
friends has a little shop in which he makes stained 
glass windows. I have seen him hold a bit of colored 

Cs] 



The Silver Lining or 


glass to the sun with all the reverent joy of a priest 
elevating a chalice. A printer in Baltimore loves 
his work so much that one cannot enter his shop 
without having the feeling of being in a holy place. 
As I write I can see him standing with his hand 
behind his ear (he is deaf) waiting for my words 
of appreciation of a beautiful book printed on hand¬ 
made paper. The happiest home I know is that of 
a successful cotton man who enjoys a more than 
comfortable income but whose most cherished joys 
are his wife and two young daughters. The man 
I know best in England is a great manufacturer, the 
head of one hundred and fifty-eight corporations, 
whose presence is a constant inspiration. Although 
he is past seventy he has the heart of a boy, the 
energy of a man in his thirties, the imagination of 
a great poet, and a creative power that is almost 
godlike. Yet he will stop to tell fairy stories, go to 
the movies, help a friend to lay out a Little garden, 
spend an afternoon with a poor artist in his studio, 
hold an audience with his wit and wisdom, and not 
once do anything to lead one to suspect that he is a 
man bearing heavy burdens. He gets his fun as he 
goes along by putting his whole being into every¬ 
thing he does. 

The point I am making, as you must have seen 
for yourself, is that the possession or lack of posses¬ 
sion of material wealth has nothing to do with hap- 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


piness. Some millionaires are happy. So are some 
paupers. Some paupers are unhappy. So are some 
millionaires. Many of us who are happy most of the 
time have our unhappy moments. Our material pos¬ 
sessions may not have changed by so much as an atom, 
but there may be a great change in what we think. 

Snug was telling me about a young woman she 
knew who had lost her husband soon after the birth 
of her first baby. The woman could not be con¬ 
soled. She was ready to curse and die. As she saw 
herself, there was no more unfortunate person in the 
world. Although she had all the creature comforts 
and had youth and beauty, the world had turned into 
an evil thing because her husband had been taken 
from her. 

One day her sister, who was doing settlement 
work, took her to a miserable attic where a woman 
lived whose husband had been killed in the rail¬ 
road shops. This woman was supporting her five 
children and was doing it without uttering a 
complaint. 

“ It is the will o’ God,” was all she said, and 
went to work. 

That visit to the attic cured the young woman of 
her trouble. She discovered that other women in the 
world had lost their husbands — women who had 
no comfortable homes, no money in the bank, no 
helpful relatives and friends. 

c?] 



The Silver Lining or 


“ What I need,” she said, “ is some work to do 
that will take my mind off myself.” 

She had discovered the Great Secret. 

To be happy, say the wise men, you must express 
yourself completely in service to your neighbors. 
You must give yourself. When you are expressing 
all your physical, mental and spiritual energy in 
doing useful work, you will know what it is Jo be in 
heaven. 

Dr. Charles W. Eliot says that any right thinking 
person can know perfect happiness by making use of 
his five senses. Try it out for yourself today. Start 
in trying to see all the beautiful things in your neigh¬ 
borhood. Look for the good qualities in your asso¬ 
ciates. Let your eyes bring to you the message sent by 
children playing in the street, by birds soaring 
through the air, by falling snowflakes or blooming 
flowers. Step into a florist shop if you live in a great 
city and cannot get into the country and treat your 
nostrils to the sweet odors. Stop in your eating and 
enjoy the taste of your food. Touch the hand of 
someone you love. The world, you will find, is a 
magical place. 

The place for you to start being happy is right 
where you are now. The time is now. 

We all discover, if we observe at all carefully, that 
we attract to us what we are. Our thoughts make 
magnets of us and we draw to ourselves the things 

•Cs] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


that belong to our thoughts. If we are loving and 
helpful and friendly and desire to create joy, love 
and help and friendship and joy will come to us nat¬ 
urally. We get by giving. The woman who shares 
her cookies with a neighbor will receive in return 
fruits or vegetables from that neighbor’s garden. 
The stenographer who helps out a fellow worker in 
an emergency will be helped when she becomes the 
victim of an emergency. 

It is so easy to have millionaire joys without a 
million. To discover the truth of this requires no 
long preparation. The person who smiles receives 
smiles in return, and the person who frowns creates 
more frowns. The joy giver naturally becomes a 
joy receiver. It is the lover who finds most love in 
the world. 

We get what we are. 



The Silver lining or 


When He Lost His Millions 

Several years ago the $2,000,000 fortune of a 
Boston business man was swept away. Not only 
did he lose his money but he found that many men 
who had been his friends seemed to have little 
time for him. He had fought and won — and lost'. 
His old associates intimated that he belonged with 
the down-and-outers and could not possibly come 
back. 

Today he has his $2,000,000 back — and much 
more. What saved him? A poem. You may find 
it hard to believe, if you have not lived through 
trouble, but that is the exact truth. It was not a 
banker, a business adviser, an engineer, or any other 
so-called practical man who saved this Bostonian 
from becoming a total wreck. A poet worked the 
magic. 

“ One morning,” says this man, “ when I was 
wondering whether it would not be best for me .to 
jump into the Charles River and end it all, I hap¬ 
pened to stop for a moment before the show window 
of a little shop where pictures and printed cards were 
displayed. I saw inside a copy of Kipling’s IF. 
That poem saved me. I carried it in my pocket and 
read it over and over. Strength seemed to flow into 
me. My head went up, my backbone stiffened, and 
I made up my mind that I would fight my way up- 

[lon 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


ward again. What I have today I owe to those 
few verses there on the wall,” he concluded, pointing 
to the handlettered poem hanging above his big desk. 

An ounce of inspiration may be worth more than 
a pound of information even to those men who have 
the reputation of being “ hard boiled.” 



Some of our reformer friends should remember 
what happened in Pennsylvania where someone got 
the notion that hawks were just so many flying evils. 
The state spent $56,000 and thousands of hawks 
were killed. Then to the consternation of farmers 
and gardeners, the field mice multiplied so fast and 
destroyed so much corn and other produce that the 
people began asking, “ How can we get our hawks 
back again? ” In this merry mixed up old world it 
is pretty hard to tell what is evil and what is good. 


It is a waste of time to argue with one of those 
writers who is a self-appointed special pleader for 
all employees and who is convinced that all em¬ 
ployers are steel-hearted brutes without human sym¬ 
pathy. To cure him all one needs to do is to give 
the poor ignoramus an executive position. 



The Silver Lining or 


Human Chemicals 

One of the most interesting problems for a man 
to consider is that of what constitutes a good execu¬ 
tive. I find upon analysis that the success or failure 
of any institution is a matter which is dependent 
wholly upon the man or men with executive power. 
To make my point clear, let us take, for example, 
an institution that is controlled by one individual. 
If that institution succeeds greatly the man respon¬ 
sible will be the executive. If it fails miserably 
the* one responsible will be the executive. 

It flashed into my mind the other night that an 
executive is like a chemist. He has a laboratory 
stocked with the seventy-eight elementary chemicals. 
With that stock he can make absolutely every sub¬ 
stance needed in his daily life if he possesses the nec¬ 
essary knowledge properly to combine the elements. 
He can make food, drinks, ores, precious stones, etc. 
He can make of his laboratory a service center of 
great power. If he possesses the knowledge needed 
froferly to unite these elements he can become, with 
his laboratory, a master servant. And as a master 
servant there will come to him, as the night follows 
the day, riches and honor and all the other good 
things of life. 

But I used the expression, “ Properly unite.” 

The chemist can, by uniting certain chemicals, 

CiO 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


produce an explosion that will blow him and his 
laboratory into ’steen million pieces and make the 
matter of holding an inquest most unnecessary and 
impossible. 

Now who is to blame? 

Is the blame to be shouldered off onto the chemical 
elements? 

Whose fault was it that the explosion occurred? 

Why, it was the fault of the chemist, the execu¬ 
tive of the laboratory. The chemical elements were 
good. All things are good when in their pure state 
or when properly united. Left in their boxes or 
bottles the chemicals which caused the explosion were 
good. United with other chemicals, they might 
have been made to serve a most useful and beautiful 
purpose. But when combined with other elements 
by nature antagonistic, they were even less harmoni¬ 
ous than two gentlemen cats tossed over the clothes¬ 
line and suspended by their tails. 

The seventy-eight chemical elements are good. 
They are made to serve certain purposes. Their 
natures are such that alone they can serve but one 
purpose, but when united with other elements the 
purpose they serve depends wholly upon the kind and 
number of the elements united. 

Water is a combination of two elementary sub¬ 
stances: hydrogen and oxygen. But there are two 


Cis] 



The Silver Lining or 




parts of hydrogen required to unite with one part 
of oxygen before water is produced. 

So with other chemicals. What happens when 
the mating takes place depends upon the wisdom of 
the chemist. The result of uniting two parts of 
hydrogen and one part of oxygen will always be 
water, just as two times two will always equal four. 
It is exact. Two parts of hydrogen and one part of 
oxygen can never be made to produce sugar or 
diamonds. 

And it seems to me that the great executive is a 
great chemist. Let us suppose that in his institution 
there are seventy-eight individuals. Each of these is 
different. Unlike the elementary chemicals, how¬ 
ever, these individuals, since they belong to the same 
general family, have many resemblances. 

But they are not alike. They have different 
temperaments. They have had different training. 
Each has received different sensations, and, since all 
are children of their environment, each sees and 
hears and feels and smells and tastes in a different 
way. 

Under these conditions it is quite a problem to get 
these seventy-eight different individuals to work 
together in harmony. 

But that is a problem which the executive must 
solve successfully if he would build up a business 





Sunshine on the Business Trail 


institution that will stand out as a Conspicuous 
Success. 

That is as certain as any human thing can be cer¬ 
tain. I am as sure of that as I am sure that I am. 

The problem is simplified by the certainty that 
among these seventy-eight there are many who are 
affinities — that is, they are folks who will work 
together harmoniously. They do not explode when 
united. They come together and when united per¬ 
form a service as useful as the union of two parts 
of hydrogen with one part of oxygen — speaking 
this way for illustrative purposes and not attempting 
to draw hair-line distinctions. 

You can see, therefore, that the executive must 
be a reader of human nature. He must make it his 
business to study his helpers just as the chemist 
studies his helpers, the chemicals. That means that 
he must be a cold, dispassionate, unprejudiced scien¬ 
tist when he studies his helpers. He must view them 
as so many chemical elements. And you needn’t be¬ 
come shocked at this apparently coldblooded state¬ 
ment. The wise chemist knows that he must use 
judgment in dealing with his chemicals. He cannot 
be prejudiced in favor of any one for general pur¬ 
poses. For instance, there are many poisons that are 
exquisitely beautiful. Other poisons that are so 
tempting that one can scarcely resist eating them. 

The executive who is wise will not work con- 

Cl?: 



The Silver Lining or 


trary to nature. His prejudiced judgment — often¬ 
times mistakenly called love for certain individuals 
or human chemicals — often prompts him improp¬ 
erly to unite two individuals that are naturally 
antagonistic. When an explosion occurs, who is to 
blame? Is it fair to the chemicals to treat them that 
way merely because the chemist has the power? 

The great executive is able to project before him a 
picture of his institution and the positions in which 
human beings are required to make that institution 
a service-rendering machine. Not only that, but he 
is able to determine what kind of an individual each 
position requires. 

Then he goes into the laboratory of the world 
and selects his helpers. He selects them solely on 
their merits as human-chemicals to produce certain 
results in certain definite positions. He doesn’t, for 
instance, select negro workers because his office or 
factory is painted white and his artistic sense de¬ 
mands contrast. He doesn’t choose any individual 
solely because he likes him personally and without 
regard to his fitness for the position he is hired to fill. 

He recognizes that it is impossible to go out and 
secure seventy-eight individuals who will render 
efficient service in their several positions and who will 
at the same time love one another personally. 

Of course it is a glorious thing when an executive 
can secure a large number of workers who love one 

[;i6] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


another and delight to be together. But it never hap¬ 
pens. It never will happen. 

The thing to do is to recognize the truth. And 
when this truth is recognized the executive will 
make it his business to see that those who are antag¬ 
onistic are kept apart. He makes a special effort to 
keep those human-chemicals from meeting who are 
likely to cause an explosion. He most certainly does 
not spend any time in trying to make them mix with¬ 
out also making ill results. When an executive 
does consciously produce such a mixture he has no 
license to damn the chemicals if he finds his eye¬ 
brows and hair singed off. 

Of course, it often happens that individuals who 
are not affinities may be brought together without 
ill-results. Oil and water may be poured into the 
same bottle and no trouble will result. 

But you can’t make them mix. 

They draw apart. Shake oil and water to¬ 
gether as much as you please and they will appar¬ 
ently be wedded until death does them part when 
you set the bottle down. But what happens after 
the bottle has remained unshaken for a few mo¬ 
ments? The oil is on top. . It is separated from the 
water. Yet the two seem to exist harmoniously. 

But did you ever try to fill a bottle with gun¬ 
powder and attempt to mix fire with it? 

It is said that all literature is a confession. I am 

C17] 



The Silver Lining'or 


not so sure that this is literature, but I do know that 
it is a confession. Being so constituted chemically 
that I either hate or love intensely, I found myself 
hating certain individuals with a hate that most cer¬ 
tainly was consistent and persevering. Like a fool 
anxious to do the right thing, but being wholly 
ignorant as to what was the right thing to do, I 
tried to compel myself to like certain individuals. 
I associated with them with or without provocation. 
The result was that there was a continuous vaude¬ 
ville performance of chemical explosions. 

We couldn’t mix. We were elementally opposed. 
It was contrary to our individual natures. 

To make matters better I tried the wise experi¬ 
ment of staying away from those with whom I 
couldn’t mix without trouble. Then many well 
meaning, but ignorant, friends tried to “ bring us 
together.” I agreed to that because I didn’t know 
any better. Undoubtedly the others who hated me 
as cordially as I hated them also agreed to the same 
thing. 

But periodic explosions continued to occur. 

Then I said to myself, “ There are certain indi¬ 
viduals who make me most unhappy and miserable 
when I am with them or near them. Those folks 
I shall avoid in the future. I shall stay away. I 
don’t want to have anything to do with them. Raus 
mit ’em! ” 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Then, still being a fool, I continued in the silence 
to hate them up to the ISith power. 

But having been blessed with machinery which 
gives me the ability to render correct judgments in 
the majority of cases, and being afflicted with the 
nature of a newspaper man who will persist in ask¬ 
ing the question, “ Why.? ” I began to find out what 
caused all the trouble. Like a good muckraker 
I went around asking questions of all who appeared 
to me to be able to tell me what I wanted to know. 
I received an interesting array of advice — most of 
it of little use. Only a limited few were personally 
interested enough to give frank opinions. To those 
I am deeply in debt. 

The above was the result of my investigations. I 
hate no one now. 

There are several whom I avoid as I would a con¬ 
tagious disease. But I do that for their comfort 
just as much as for my own. I have at last arrived 
at a point where I can see that they are individuals 
just as I am an individual. And I know that if I 
had their temperaments and had received the same 
sensations I would do just what they are doing in the 
way they are doing it. 

They are doing what their natures command them 
to do. 

I am doing what my nature commands me to do. 

Both of us are right, just as the fire and the gun- 

[ 19 ] 



The Silver 'Lining or 


powder are individually all right. It is only once in 
a great while when united they serve a useful purpose. 
That is when an explosion is needed for some special 
purpose. Perhaps there are times when I should be 
mixed with certain individuals. But no one will 
mix us who does not want an explosion. 

I say that I know what I am talking about when 
I liken individuals to chemicals. I know that there 
are some folks for whom I would make every sacri¬ 
fice. I would give them anything and everything 
in my power to give them. Others there are whose 
wealth will never be increased by soliciting from me. 

And all this is as natural as that two and two 
make four and not seven. 

One who realizes the truth of all this has a big 
work to perform. I am speaking of one who would 
become a great executive, capable of drawing to him 
and holding together in harmony the men and wo¬ 
men needed to build a great institution. 

His work is to train his senses. He must develop 
himself physically. When he develops himself 
physically he will see right, hear right, smell right, 
feel right and taste right. When he does these five 
things correctly he will sensate correctly. We know 
that it is upon the quality of the sensations we re¬ 
ceive that the quality of our judgment depends. 
Therefore it behooves us to practice the philosophy 
of man-building. 

[zo] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


We must learn how to develop that power which 
will enable us to act towards our helpers as a great 
chemist acts towards his chemicals. We must be 
dispassionate, unprejudiced, wisely selfish. For our 
own good and the welfare of our institution we 
must combine only those elements that may, without 
ill effects, be combined. 

It may be suggested to you that the thing to do 
with a chemical that causes explosions is to toss it 
out of the window. That can be done. But in jus¬ 
tice to the chemical you toss out, you must toss out 
all other chemicals that are antagonistic. And when 
you have done that, what have you left? Where 
are your power-producing chemicals, your chemicals 
that “make things happen? ’’ Your laboratory 
would be fitted up with the weak elements that 
aren’t positive enough in their power to be antag¬ 
onistic to anything. 

You can’t afford to toss out any chemicals 
that are useful. They are all right when prop¬ 
erly united or when left alone. Your business is 
to see that they are not compelled to mix with antag¬ 
onistic elements. 

No human chemical, with ^even a modicum of wis¬ 
dom, will wander around seeking chances to mix 
up in an explosion. Explosions, as I have discov¬ 
ered, destroy the individualities of the chemicals 
that cause them. 


1:20 



/ 


4 


The Silver Lining or 

But, you say, here is a human chemical that is 
worth a great deal, but the executive, on account of 
his chemical formation, cannot deal with him with¬ 
out an explosion of some kind. What can be done? 

That is easy. There are chemicals that chemists 
cannot bear to be near. They sicken them, or have 
some other ill effect.' In their elemental condition 
these chemicals are so powerful that certain chemists 
cannot deal with them. 

What do they do? Why, they have assistants who 
are not so affected. They combine these chemicals 
with others and bring the combination to the head 
chemist who then handles it without ill effects. 

This solution of the problem is one that makes one 
tolerant. One finds oneself more charitable, more 
forgiving, more sensible and infinitely stronger and 
masterful. This mental attitude gives one a sense 
of power — a sense of power that always comes with 
wisdom in every department of human existence. 





Sunshine on the Business Trail 


A Piece of Cherry Pie 

One day a friend and I were talking about the 
damnable habit some business men have of driving 
themselves all their working days without getting 
any enjoyment out of what they do. 

‘‘ I remember one time when I was ‘ Beauty 
Editor’ of one of New York’s newspapers,” began 
my friend, apropos of nothing at all apparently. 
“ They called me ‘ Beauty Editor ’ in derision. My 
job was to make the paper look better typographically. 

“ The managing editor didn’t like me very well, 
because I had been put in by the owner. He thought 
I was interfering with his job. The result was he 
made life miserable for me. That was one job in 
which I found no joy. 

“ One day seemed to be darker than usual and I 
could see no signs of sunshine anywhere. Every¬ 
thing seemed to go wrong and the whole world 
seemed to be out of joint. 

“ It is funny how little things will seem to be 
big things on dark days like that. Into my mind 
popped the idea that if I could get a piece of cherry 
pie for dessert at a certain restaurant where I had 
enjoyed this pie very much in the past, life would 
not be one-half so dreary. 

“ Thinking about my troubles I went to this 
restaurant; asked if they had cherry pie for desert; 

1:23] 



The Silver Lining or 

■ ' " . . . ■ ■ ■ ■ ■■■ ■■ ' ■ I 

found that they had it; ordered my meat dish; ate 
it and had a piece of this juicy, luscious pie placed 
before me. 

“ A short time afterward, glancing down at my 
plate, I saw that my pie had disappeared. There 
were marks on the plate to show that ai piece of 
pie had been there and my fork was cherry colored. 
Evidently I had eaten it. 

“ Grown man that I was, I could have wept. 
Here I had been looking forward all morning to 
eating this piece of pie and I had concentrated 
on my troubles so much that I had eaten my dessert 
without knowing it. The thing that was to brighten 
my day had disappeared. 

Then I went out in the park and sat on a bench 
like a bum and hated myself.” 

Then he went on to say that many business men 
go through life with their minds concentrated on 
their business worries and troubles just as he went 
through his lunch hour. The things that would give 
them joy are passed by because their minds are not 
in tune to get the joy out of their work. 

These men think that just because they carry a 
heavy load of responsibility they are immune from 
any of the ordinary little courtesies of life. They 
grunt in answer to their wives’ questions, snarl at 
the servants, frown at their own children, snap at 
their subordinates in their offices instead of treating 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


them like human beings, and in countless other ways 
make damnable nuisances of themselves. 

They are not happy themselves and, therefore, they 
are not in a position to make others happy. 

When they go away on a trip, their subordinates 
breathe a fervent “ Thank God,” and when they 
return these same people say to one another, “ Well, 
now hell will break loose again.” 

These people get no pleasure out of the cherry pie 
in their life. 

They act as if their whole life was one tough 
steak which they are forced to eat with toothless 
gums. 

. All this, mind you, in a world where there is great 
joy and love and neighborliness and good cheer. 

Why not enjoy your cherry pie of life? 



The Silver Lining or 


Men Who Are Rich 

One time I accused Lord Leverhulme of the 
crime of being a rich man. He came back with, 
“ What do you mean by rich? ” 

“ You are rich,” I answered. 

“ How do you know I am rich? ” 

He thought he had me. He knew what was in 
my mind when I called him rich. He guessed ac¬ 
curately, too. But I changed my thinking before 
I answered. 

“ I know you are rich because I have read about 
the work you have done and I have many friends 
in England who know you personally and they have 
all told me the same story about you. You make 
and hold friends. People like you instinctively. 
You are a builder and experience the joys of creation 
all the time. And you have all the money you need 
to keep the wolf from the door.” 

“ Oh,” he answered, “ if you talk that way I’ll 
have to admit that I am rich.” 

Then he went on to say that the boys and girls 
with whom he went to school sixty years ago are 
still personal friends of his. He likes them and 
they seem to like him. 

He made clear that men are rich not because they 
have money in the bank, but because they have rich 
thoughts and feelings. The man who is express- 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


ing himself usefully and finds joy in that expression 
is a rich man. 

. Lord Leverhulme is far more youthful in spirit 
at seventy-one than many men are at thirty-one. 
He has kept young by thinking like a youth whose 
brain is flooded with dreams. He likes to play. 
He likes to tell stories and joke. He makes those 
with him keep on the alert, yet one is not conscious 
of being under the least strain. I know I was lone¬ 
some after he went away — actually lonesome in 
an intimate, personal way. 

“ Lord Leverhulme is a very rich man,” said I. 



One reason why my life has always been rich is 
because I have never permitted myself to think poor 
thoughts. The world contains everything that I 
need, so why should I worry? The man who never 
entertains poor thoughts is a rich man. 



Here, in five words, is a great truth of life: 
“Joy impregnates; sorrows bring forth.” To the 
gods I give thanks for every sorrow they have so 
generously sent to me. I am grateful for the griefs 
as I am for the joys. 





The Silver Lining or 


Why He Showed No Fear 

As SECRETARY to a big New York corporation 
official a young man meets many powerful multi¬ 
millionaires. One day his employer said to him, 
“ I notice that you meet the big fellows just as 
calmly as you do your own personal friends. You 
seem to have no fear of them. Aren’t you awed 
by such giants at all? The other people here in 
the place show by their actions that they recognize 
the kingship of those men. Why don’t you? ” 

The young secretary laughed. “ I suppose credit 
for what seems to be my fearlessness must go to a 
story about Napoleon I read a long time ago. When 
after thirteen months of fighting in Italy the Cor-' 
sican took up his headquarters at the castle of 
Montebello, near Milan, he assumed the airs of a 
monarch. He lived like a king. A rigid etiquette 
prevailed. His officers were no longer received at 
his table. He even arranged things so that the 
inhabitants of the country might gaze upon him 
from a respectable distance when he dined. His 
frown made men tremble. He fairly radiated 
power. Everything about him suggested the con- 
querer. Yet all this time he did not have fower 
enough, nor infuence enough, nor courage enough 
to drive a little yaffing dog that he hated out of 


11^83 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


his wife^s room because the dog was her favorite, 
Napoleon was afraid of his wife at that time. 

“ Whenever I am tempted to tremble in the pres¬ 
ence of a big man here in New York I ask myself, 
‘ What is the name of the little dog that has more 
influence than this man either at home or else¬ 
where? ’ In other words, I assume that he is 
afraid of something somewhere and his fear and 
my fear make us fraternity brothers. He may not 
be bossed by his wife, but he may be bossed by his 
daughter or the professional at the golf club. I 
figure that he’s human, too.” 



When after a strenuous day you are too tired to 
water the lawn and you look up at t;he sky and say, 
“ I guess it’s going to rain tonight anyway,” and 
the next morning before you get out of bed you 
hear the rain pounding down on the roof — say, 
boy (in the words of Briggs), isn’t it a grand and 
glorious feeling? 



When I see a man wearing a black band on his 
arm I can’t help wishing that there were more 
people who believed with the Japanese, that no man 
has a right to make others unhappy by advertising 
his own sorrow. 


1:293 



The Silver Lining or 


The Devil of Fear 

General Grant, who is not unknown in this 
country as a winner of victories, once confessed 
that he often knew fear before going into battle. 
“ I was often afraid,” he said, “ But I figured that 
the opposing General was also afraid. I figured 
on his fear of me and on his ignorance of my fear 
of him, and went in and crushed him before he 
found me out.” Napoleon was another man who 
was addicted to the victory-winning habit. He 
seemed absolutely without fear. No enemy ever 
saw him tremble. He was always master. He took 
his position as a leader by the divine right of fear¬ 
lessness and ability. Nelson, when a little boy, was 
once found by a relative a long distance from home. 
“ I should think fear would have kept you from 
going so far,” the relative said. “ Fear? ” said the 
future admiral, “ I don’t know him.” 

The disease of fear is the greatest and most dan¬ 
gerous of any we know. It is worse than small¬ 
pox, yellow fever, tuberculosis, and many others 
combined. It is a disease so insidious that its vic¬ 
tims cannot be counted. No one can ever know the 
millions of men and women whose success has been 
killed by fear. No one can tell how many persons 
have died of diseases that owed their start to the 
emotion of fear. The story is told of a physician 

Cso] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


< 


who discovered a woman ill with fever in a southern 
hotel. Instead of spreading the fear-thought, he 
called the guests together and told them to help 
nurse the patient as though she had no worse dis¬ 
ease than a bad cold. All but one woman followed 
the doctor’s advice. This one quarantined herself 
in her room and because of her fear was the only 
one who caught the disease. 

Fear has killed more successes than all the armies 
of the world have killed .men. Sales managers 
everywhere can relate countless stories of salesmen 
who fell down solely because they feared. When 
they went out on the road they did not go out with 
confidence shining forth from their eyes. Their 
actions, their words, their inner thoughts proclaimed 
them to be filled with fear. Of course, it is only 
the confident salesmen who secure the orders, and 
these men with fear-filled bodies and minds could 
not persuade customers to purchase their goods at 
a profit. The fearful salesman does not enter the 
office of a prospect with a buoyant step, confident 
manner, energetic action, and eyes that look straight 
out and proclaim to all who look into them that they 
are controlled by a mind that is self-reliant and 
purposeful. 

The real salesman has faith in himself, faith in 
his customer, faith in his goods, and faith in his 
house. He knows that he has the power to properly 

[30 


V 





The Silver Lining or , 


present his goods so as to secure the favorable atten¬ 
tion of the prospective customer. He is deter¬ 
mined to sell his goods provided he discovers that 
the customer has need of what he offers. So long 
as he is convinced of the value of his goods to his 
customer, of his own power to properly present the 
merits of his proposition, and of the ability of the 
house to deliver what he promises, he should look 
every man square in the face. 

Before starting out in the morning, if there are 
in a man any of the fear microbes, let him sell him¬ 
self. Let him tell himself before a mirror why 
he should purchase his own goods. If he cannot 
convince himself that his goods are desirable, he 
has no business posing as a salesman. But if a man 
can convince himself that his proposition is right and 
earnestly feels that those whom he approaches need 
it, he should drive straight for his goal and sweep 
all opposition aside. No man should be fearful 
whose desire it is to serve. And no salesman has 
a right to represent a proposition which hasn’t for 
its object the serving of those to whom it is offered. 

There is no greater demolisher of fear than ask¬ 
ing and answering the question. Why?, If you 
have never injured that person and have no inten¬ 
tion of injuring him, what reason have you for 
being fearful? If you are a salesman and desire 
to sell an automobile, a case of watches, an insur- 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


ance policy, a suit of clothes — it matters not what 
— why should you fear the man to whom you 
desire to make a sale, if your proposition, as you 
see it, will serve him? Supposing he is an impor¬ 
tant man in his community. Supposing he is 
wealthy. Supposing he is a man of power. What 
difference does that make? The more important, 
wealthy and powerful he is, the better. Any dub 
can take an order from a weakling, but it calls for 
a real salesman to sell something to a real man. 
It isn’t the power of the prospective customer that 
kills the sale. It is the fear of the salesman that 
performs the trick. 

Asking the ' question. Why? calls for analysis. 
It calls for reasons why. Why should Mr. Smith 
purchase this watch, automobile, book, or insurance 
policy instead of some other? Because — and 
there you have it. If Mr. Smith should purchase 
any watch, automobile, book, insurance policy, and 
you are convinced that yours is the best for him to 
purchase, you are performing Mr. Smith a real 
service when you call his attention to your offering. 
And if you are really serving Mr. Smith why should 
you fear him? Salesmen who concentrate their 
thoughts on the profit they will make on the sale, 
instead of the service their proposition will render, 
are the ones most addicted to the fear habit. 

Retail clerks also suffer from fear. Instead of 

C33] 



The Silver Lining or 


thinking of themselves as salesmen and saleswomen 
with the space back of their counters as their terri¬ 
tory, too many of them are apt to belittle their 
position. Retail stores exist because they serve the 
people. Retail stores are not strong and successful 
because of the size of the building or the quality 
of goods alone, but because of the strength and effi¬ 
ciency of the salespeople. Without salespeople the 
store would fail. Being so important, why should 
salespeople fear their customers and their employers 
so long as they render efficient service. 

The real sales person in a store knows thoroughly 
the goods in his or her department. He or she 
should know more about those goods than any cus¬ 
tomer, no matter how wealthy, high in social posi¬ 
tion, haughty in manner, or important that customer 
may be. Only the ignorant fear. The truly effi¬ 
cient servants never fear. 

Many a man has been forced to retain a lower 
position because his fear prevented him telling those 
who could have helped him of his real value. Fear 
prevented him from selling his services where he 
could obtain the best profit. Talking to his fellow 
employes, his voice fairly thrilled with enthusiasm 
and confidence as he told of some plan which would 
benefit the institution that employed him. But 
when brought before the officers or directors — the 
persons who could put this plan into operation — 

[343 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, his 
breath came in gasps, his lips were dry, and he stood 
before them like some dumb animal. Filled with 
fear, he stood before the officers as one diseased. He 
was not a healthy, strong-minded, self-reliant, force¬ 
ful, keen, alert business builder. 

Scores of men and women are in institutions as 
employes who by the divine right of wealth of brain 
should be employers and heads of institutions of 
their own. Equipped with bright minds, strong 
bodies, constructive imaginations, executive ability, 
and other good things, they still hang back, because 
they fear to branch out for themselves. They fear 
failure. They prefer the small certainty for the 
great uncertainty. They will not risk anything. 
Their fear makes them conservative. And a con¬ 
servative is a man who is standing in boiling water 
and refuses to jump for fear he will get into water 
that is hotter. If Marshall Field had feared, he 
would never have built up his great business in the 
west. Read the biographies of men who have wrung 
success from an unwilling world. They were men 
who were unafraid. 

The greatest enemy of Fear is auto-suggestion. 
A suggestion is anything that arouses thought. An 
auto-suggestion is a suggestion that you give your¬ 
self. Thus, “ I am courageous,” is a positive sug¬ 
gestion. If you persist in telling yourself that you 

[35] 



The Silver Lining or 


are courageous, that you dare face any man and 
look him squarely in the eye, that you cannot lose 
your poise, your self-control, your confidence, you 
cannot fail to become courageous and kill the fear- 
thought. That which we fear usually does not exist. 
Tell yourself this. Most of our worries — which 
are children of fear — are over things that never 
happen. 

We control our constructive power, our imagina¬ 
tion, and we can make what we desire. When our 
mind is peopled with fear and worries, we ourselves 
are to blame. We can suggest courage to ourselves 
and we will acquire courage. If we are fearful, 
why not let us try auto-suggestion? Why not 
analyze that which causes us to fear, and follow 
the analysis by talking ourselves into being coura¬ 
geous? Instead of waiting for someone else to say 
to us, “ There is nothing to fear,” let us say that 
to ourselves. Let us repeat it until we win. Our 
fear-habit was not formed in an instant, and we 
cannot hope to kill it off and form the habit of 
being courageous with one suggestion. 

Orison Swett Marden tells of a California 
Scotchman, McGregor, who was argumentative and 
fearless. Early one morning as he was returning 
home, a pistol was poked in his face, and he heard: 
“ Throw up your hands! ” 

“ Why? ” asked McGregor calmly. 

[36] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


“ Throw them up! ’’ 

“ But what for? ” 

“ Put up your hands! insisted the footpad, 
shaking his pistol. “ Will you do what I tell you? ” 

“ That depends,” said McGregor. “ If you can 
show me any reason why I should put up me hands. 
I’ll no say but what I wull; but your mere requaist 
wud be no justification for me to do so absurd a 
thing. Noo, why should you, a complete stranger, 
ask me at this oor a’ the mornin’ on a public street 
to pit up me hands? ” 

“ If you don’t quit gassin’ and obey orders. I’ll 
blow the top of your head off! ” cried Mr. Robber. 

“ What? Faith, man, you must be oot a’ yer 
head. Come, noo, puir buddy,” said McGregor 
soothingly, coolly catching the pistol and wresting 
it with a quick twist out of the man’s hand. 

“ Come, noo, an’ I’ll show ye where they’ll take 
care of ye. Hech! Dinna ye try to fecht, or I’ll 
shoot ye! By the way, ye might as weel put oop 
yer ain hands, an’ just walk ahead a’ me. That’s 
it! Trudge awa’, noo.” 

“ It wudna be a bad idea to put him in a straight- 
jacket,” McGregor said serenely to the officer at the 
jail. “ There’s little doot but the buddy’s daft.” 

There was a man wholly without fear. He was 
different from the ordinary run of man, and the 
robber didn’t know what to do with him. Robbers 

1:37] 



The Silver Lining or 


count on fear to help them. That’s why one lone 
man can hold up a train. 

Let a salesman eliminate fear from his equipment, 
and his business will increase in a way that will make 
his sales-manager smile like Charles Schwab. Let 
him fill himself with faith in himself, in his goods, 
in his customers and his house, and he will go out 
jauntily and make two orders from where but one 
grew before. The clerks behind the counter, with 
fear eliminated, will consider themselves real busi¬ 
ness builders and social servants, and will greet all 
customers with a confident smile that will persuade 
them to buy goods. The employe who is ambitious 
to rise, after he has killed fear, can approach his 
superiors and lay before them in a confident self- 
reliant manner his plan whereby he can render the 
institution greater service and secure for himself 
greater regards. With more courage, hundreds who 
are now forced through fear to depend upon the 
salary envelope, will go out and start businesses for 
themselves and fight their way through to success. 

Let us remember that Fear is a disease, and that 
no successful man can be afflicted with it. Remem¬ 
ber also that no matter how malignant it may be, 
it can always be cured. To kill fear we need no 
chemicals, no specialists in diseases. All we need 
is the ability to analyze ourselves and that which 
makes us fear and the perserverance needed to kill 

C38] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


off the fear-thought by the great power of auto¬ 
suggestion. Let us tell ourselves that we are cou¬ 
rageous, that we are really trying to help folks, that 
we are constantly growing in strength and power, 
that folks really are glad to welcome us because of 
what we can do for them, that no one wants to harm 
us, that all things are good, that most of our troubles 
are imaginary, that in all the world there really is 
nothing of such value that we can afford to worry 
over it, that worry never constructs, that courage 
is constructive, that it is only the constructive that 
wins success — and with that kind of talk to our¬ 
selves we’ll banish fear and become McGregors 
raised to the nth power. 


X 


1139II 



The Silver Lining or 


Anticipation Plus Realization 

The realist kind of vacation is the one that is 
enjoyed in anticipation. There can be folks who, 
being pessimistic, due to mosquito prodding, advance 
the argument that the anticipatory vacation is the 
only real vacation there is. Such folks know noth¬ 
ing of the lure of the open road. Into their ears 
never thunder the commands of the Red Gods. 

We who have sent a canoe racing down the rapids 
of a northern river, who have paddled the treacher¬ 
ous dugout, who have loafed with river-men ins 
bateaus, who have offered the incense of wood smoke 
to the pines and the god of the open air, who have 
whipped the streams for trout, or starred in 
“ Patience ” on the bank of some mighty river, 
perched on the end of a log, wishful for finny 
friends that one may fry for breakfast that lures 
us toward day through the night — we know the 
joys of realization. We know the mellow music 
of the rain that seems to caress — as music some¬ 
times caresses — the canvas above our heads. And 
we know, too, the serenity that comes to one under 
the upturned canoe that saves one from the sudden 
shower. 

We are the only ones who know the true joys of 
anticipation, because we have known the joys of 
past realization. And so we are looking ahead — 

[40] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


looking ahead into the very heart of summer. And 
we shall be tired — “ so tired we can’t lay flat 
enough and sort o’ wish that we could spread 
out like molasses on the bed and jest drap off the 
edges.” Summer? We are drenched with it in 
anticipation already. And after the realization will 
come the memories. 

Memories are never accouched from the womb 
of anticipation. 

Mate Anticipation and Realization. You have it. 


If one goes about thinking that the world is filled 
with crooks and schemers, the world is filled with 
crooks and schemers. On the other hand, if one 
believes that the world is filled with fine, neighborly, 
helpful, kindly folks, one finds people of that class in 
the great majority. 


1:413 



The Silver Lining or 


Power to the Faint 

At luncheon one day a friend asked, “ What 
do you consider your job on this earth to be? ” 

Now that is a somewhat startling question to 
shoot at a man without warning. It would have 
bothered me, too, if a few days before I had not 
received one of those little folders which used to 
be sent out by a church in New York. Of course 
I could have answered it in my own language, more 
or less haltingly. But it was so much more effec¬ 
tive when answered in the language of Isaiah. 

“ Some time,” I said, “ I want it said of me what 
Isaiah wrote.” 

“ What was that? ” asked my friend. 

‘‘He giveth power to the faint” — I quoted; 
“ and to them that have no might he increaseth 
strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, 
and young men shall utterly fall; but they that 
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they 
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run 
and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” 

“ It’s a big job,” he said. 

“ It is,” I agreed. 

“ It’s a good job, too.” My friend was evidently 
impressed. 

“ It is a glorious one,” said I, “ and I love it.” 

1:42] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


He laughed. “ Say,” he exclaimed, “ isn’t life 
a great old game? ” 

We then rose and went back to work. 



When we reach the end of our lives may we be 
able to say something as cheerful and friendly and 
optimistic as one of the last recorded utterances of 
Thomas Hood: “ It’s a beautiful world and since I 
have been lying here I have thought of it more and 
more; it is not so bad, even humanly speaking, as 
people would make it out. I have had some very 
happy days while I lived in it and I could have wished 
to stay a little longer.” 



The Silver Lining or 


Why I Like to Play Dead ** 

There is a business man in our town who has 
many foolish notions. That is, folks say his notions 
are foolish. In his favor it must be said he is suc¬ 
cessful financially, socially, and has more friends 
than he knows what to do with. So his foolish 
notions may not be so foolish after all. 

He likes to kill himself. 

That does sound asinine, doesn’t it? But listen. 

“ When I was a youngster in business,” said this 
business man, “ I used to take myself and my affairs 
too seriously. When I wanted anything done right, 
I used to tell myself, I had to do it myself. One 
day I was telling a friend what a hard time I had 
getting work out of the way. 

“ ‘ The worst of it is,’ I said, ‘ the bigger the 
business grows the less time I have to myself. Lord, 
I certainly envy you fellows who have succeeded 
and have no more worries.’ 

“ How that’ man laughed at me. I felt hurt. 
The problem was too serious for me to laugh at 
it — so I thought. 

“ ‘ All you need to do,’ went on my friend, when 
he had controlled his laughter, ‘ is to die once or 
twice a year — or oftener, if you can possibly do it.’ 

‘ Are you losing your mind? ’ I asked, wonder¬ 
ing whether I should show anger or sympathy. 

Lul 




Sunshine on the Business Trail 


“ ‘ Never was more serious in my life. Ever 
hear of Alexander' the Great? ’ 

“ ‘ Of course.’ 

“ ‘ And of Julius Caesar and Napoleon-’ 

“ ‘ What are you talking about? ’ 

“ ‘ And of E. H. Harriman and J. P. Morgan 
and a lot of other big fellows? You are sure you 
heard of all of them? ’ 

“ I didn’t like what seemed to me to be foolish¬ 
ness. But I followed him far enough to answer, 
‘ Yes; I’ve heard of them.’ 

“ ‘ Pretty important fellows, weren’t they? Held 
important positions in the world, didn’t they? 
Thought they were some pumpkins and all that, 
eh? Took themselves mighty seriously and snapped 
and snarled quite a bit every so often, thus show¬ 
ing; they had lost their sense of humor. Get the 
idea? ’ 

“ ‘ I’ll be blessed if I do,’ I answered sharply. 

‘‘ ‘ Know what happened to these fellows in the 
end? ’ 

“ ‘ They died.’ 

“ I thought that would end the foolish talk. It 
didn’t. 

“‘Exactly! ’ beamed my friend, acting like a 
fond parent whose favorite child has answered a 
hard question correctly. 

“ ‘ They died,’ he continued — ‘ died real dead 

t453 




The Silver Lining or 


— and right then and there the world stopped. 
The work they were doing when they were alive 
was too important for other men to carry on, so 
all their machinery collapsed like a sort of inter¬ 
national One-horse Shay. Their employees starved 
and the buildings they occupied became the abode 
of rats and mice-’ 

“ ‘ It is becoming clearer,’ I broke in. 

“ ‘ Of course it is. You get the idea. Those 
important fellows were not of such importance after 
all. The world went on. Their big problems — 
the ones that kept them awake nights and made 
them snap and snarl and bark and bite and eat out 
their own hearts — were as if they had never 
existed. Their businesses went on — some of them 
went on better than they did when their big bosses 
were alive. 

“ ‘ Which brings me right down to you and to 
the suggestion I made which caused you to look 
upon me as a demented person. I advised you to 
die — not once, but many times. I don’t know the 
language of the preachers, but it seems to me that 
there is something about getting life more abun¬ 
dantly. And isn’t there an old query to this effect: 
If I die, shall I live again? 

“ ‘ It is because I have found by experience that 
I gain life more abundantly by indulging in an 
imaginary death every so often that I offer the 

1:46] 




Sunshine on the Business Trail 


suggestion to you. And you can find out for your¬ 
self that you can live again right here and now. 
Just pretend to yourself that you have died sud¬ 
denly. Now ask yourself, what will happen to my 
business? If your business isn’t prepared for your 
death it isn’t managed properly-’ 

“ I interrupted him. ‘ When my business is 
older-’ 

“ But he would not let me get away with it. 
‘ Your job is to live one day at a time. Get the spirit 
of that eat-drink-and-be-merry philosophy right now. 
In the midst of life we are in death — and vice 
versa. You can’t afford to wait until next year or 
the year after to live correctly. Now is the 
accepted time. Today, as wise old Emerson said, 
is the best day in the year. Your job is to die right 
now. 

“ ‘ Here,’ he said, poking me with his finger, ‘ I’ve 
stabbed you and you have dropped down. In a 
moment or so you’ll be as dead as any dead person. 
You can’t do a thing about your business. What 
will happen? Mind, now, you are dead. Being 
dead, tell me what is likely to happen.’ 

“ All this may seem foolish to you, but I assure 
you it meant more to me than any lesson I ever 
learned before or since. I entered into the spirit 
of my friend’s game and pretended I was dead. 
Looking at my business from the other world I 

[473 





The Silver Lining or 


could see that Fred Bartlet, an assistant of mine, 
was just the one my widow would turn to for help. 
He had been with me for four years, was steady, 
reliable, had imagination, but always let me boss 
things. He never fought me or took special 
authority upon himself. I could see that the reason 
he didn’t do it was not because he didn’t want it, 
but because he would have had to work too hard 
to take it away from me. 

In imagination I could see him calling in the 
department heads and giving them authority to 
handle the details of their respective jobs — details 
that I had always kept my fingers on. Bartlet 
would work like a nailer because he would want 
to make a success of the business with which he had 
been connected for four years, and the other fel¬ 
lows would follow his example for good reasons 
of their own. They would not only hold the busi¬ 
ness together, but would do their best to. make it 
grow so that it would pay them all more money. 

‘‘ I tell you I did some quick thinking. I will 
not give you a detailed picture of what I saw. What 
you would see in your own business would differ 
from mine. The important thing is I saw that the 
business would go ahead. Not, perhaps, exactly in 
the way I would carry it forward if I attended to 
all the details personally. But it would go ahead 
strongly because it would be more than a one man’s 

[48] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


business. I saw that my big job was to lay out 
the policies and construct the framework for the 
other fellows to finish. 

“ Up to that point I had always thought of the 
business as mine. I had thought it into existence. 
It was my dream materialized. I was the boss. 
Most men have had these thoughts at one time or 
another. But when I was killed by my friend and 
was forced to leave the business behind, as all dead 
men must do, I saw that while I owned the busi¬ 
ness in the eyes of the bankers, the business was 
greater than I. I saw that the business belonged 
to the world in general, but more particularly to 
those who were associated with me. 

Right there I said, ‘ Having been killed right 
now, I must trust the business to chance. But, oh, 
if I could only come back to life, what a different 
kind of boss IM be! ’ 

“ And then I came back to life. That death of 
mine had served its purpose. It made me see things 
more clearly. 

The very next day I called in Bartlet and three 
or four of the other men and told them that busi¬ 
ness of a private nature was calling me away from 
the plant in a week or so and I wanted them to 
give me what time they could getting a plan per¬ 
fected which would enable them to handle all the 
details of the business during my absence. 

[493 



The Silver Lining or 


“ ‘ Just pretend that I have died and it is up to 
you fellows to run this place/ I said. ‘ Figure out 
what ought to be done to perfect the machinery so 
that it will run along without a jar and accomplish 
the results we all want.’ 

“ Bartlet was made general manager and I told 
him to work out the plan with the other men and 
have it ready for me Friday afternoon at two 
o’clock. The time was then Tuesday. I had al¬ 
ready awakened to the wisdom of setting definite 
time for the job. 

“ ‘ I’ll be away until Friday/ I said, ‘ so you’ll 
have to look after things as they come up until I 
come back. Don’t let problems accumulate. We 
may as well start in right now, Bartlet, with this 
plan. You are general manager and I’ll leave the 
details to you.’ 

“ I went away to my home and spent two miserable 
days. Lord, how I wanted to go down to the 
office! More than once I was on the point of 
telephoning. But the eyes of my wife, who had 
been told the story, were upon me and I resisted. 
I couldn’t read and I had not learned how to play. 
It was plain hell. My business was to me what 
the drug habit is to so many unfortunates. It con¬ 
trolled me. I did not control it. 

“ But Friday afternoon Bartlet came in with the 
plan. He and the other men and I worked to- 

Cso] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


gether all the rest of the afternoon. Not having 
finished at closing time, I was on the point of order¬ 
ing some food sent in. But that, I knew, was not 
the right thing to do. I invited them to the club — 
a club I had seldom visited — and not once during 
the meal did we talk about the plan. Afterward 
we went back to the office and settled things so that 
nothing remained for me to do except to introduce 
Bartlet to the bank and place my initials on the 
proof of an announcement we were sending out to 
the trade telling of Bartlet’s appointment and of the 
appointments of his assistants. 

“ A week later I went off to the woods with my 
wife. We found a delightful place twelve miles 
from the railroad, run by a man by the name of 
Elliot Fisher, a young fellow who had been em¬ 
ployed in a bank a few years before, but who had 
been threatened with tuberculosis. He had gone into 
the country with his wife and, because they had to 
make a living, started taking boarders. They had 
converted some old farmhouses into comfortable 
quarters and were having the time of their lives en¬ 
tertaining a limited number of guests. 

“ Not having anything else to do, I accepted the 
invitation of some men to join them on a trip up 
one of the mountains. Climbing took so much 
breath and so much thought that for the first time 
I forgot business. Not until the next morning did 

C51] 



The Silver Lining or 


I begin to wonder how the plant had handled that 
big order we had received the day I left from 
Crandall & Company, but I even quit wondering 
about that when I joined those same men who in¬ 
sisted that sliding down hill was the greatest sport 
in the world. In spite of myself I found the spirit 
of my boyhood coming back. I really enjoyed 
myself. 

“ Fisher took me out for a ride one day and told 
me something about his own business. ‘ Some day,’ • 
I said to him, ‘ I suppose you’ll have a fine big 
hotel here.’ 

“ ‘ Not while I keep my common sense,’ he 
answered. 

“ ‘ Why not.? ’ I asked. ‘ Don’t you want to 
grow.? ’ 

“ ‘ Yes,’ he said, ‘ I want to grow. But I want 
to grow as a free man, not as a slave. My wife 
and I are living now. She goes tramping with the 
guests or plays checkers or cards or talks — what¬ 
ever she wants to do. That keeps her close to her 
guests, establishes personal contact, and enables her 
not only to see that things are going as they should, 
but to have a delightful time. The city folks come 
to her with their ideas and she has a bully time. I 
go hunting or fishing and always have time for 
loafing with folks who want to loaf. My job is 
fun. We keep our overhead down by keeping the 

[52: 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


business comparatively small. Every year I turn 
away guests. That is better than having to worry 
about getting the number needed to pay the expenses. 
I can boss this job and give satisfactory personal 
service. To increase the size of the plant would 
be to make it more like a cold city hotel — a purely 
commercial proposition. Why not live as one goes 
along? ’ 

“ So, out there in the woods I got some ideas 
that smoothed out the wrinkles in my mind. I also 
got rested. The result was when I returned to the 
office I found things running more smoothly than 
I had any reason to expect. Only a few big mat¬ 
ters awaited my attention. Bartlet came in after 
I had cleared off my desk. 

“ ‘ Busy? ’ I asked. 

“ ‘ No, sir.’ 

“ Then I told him about Elliot Fisher and what 
he had said to me about the way he and his wife 
kept in personal touch with the guests, instead of 
working in the kitchen or out in the field. I said, 
‘ Our business is pretty much like the hotel business. 
We can make it impersonal, like some of those chilly 
city hotels, or we can make it a human, living, 
friendly thing. Now you fellows are running the 
kitchen and attending to all the out-of-sight work — 
doing it as it ought to be done, too. What do you 
think of the idea of letting me go off across the 

[53] 



The Stiver Lining or 


country with my wife, visiting our customers in a 
purely social way? What I want to do is to get 
outside and establish personal connections between 
the head of this house and the men who buy our 
product. Our salesmen visit them, of course, but 
salesmen are salesmen. What this house needs is 
some one to go out who doesn’t do any selling and 
who can speak as the head of the firm. Mind, 
Bartlet, I am not going to fill out any of those 
confounded daily reports of yours. I am going to 
disappear, and all you have to do is to send me a 
weekly statement to show me that you are not let¬ 
ting the business run into the ground.’ 

“ Well, sir, that is what I did. My wife and 
I had a glorious two months. We went everywhere. 
And you should have seen the surprised look on the 
faces of some of our customers when I introduced 
myself. They laid themselves out to entertain us. 
I guess I even made a few speeches before the 
Advertising Clubs, the Rotarians, and the rest of 
those good fellows. 

“ What surprised me was the number of personal 
friends I made — men I wanted to have visit my 
home and men who liked me in the same way. I 
tell you, I had a stack of personal letters to write. 
In time, just because I simply couldn’t keep up the 
personal correspondence, I wrote a general good- 
fellowship letter which we printed in big type on 

1:543 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


good stock and mailed out. My signature in fac¬ 
simile was at the end of it. Out of that grew our 
house publication. This publication is not pub¬ 
lished to sell goods. It is expected to do what I 
did on that trip — make friends for the house by 
being friendly. But even the work of getting out 
the magazine has been delegated. I found a man 
who can do that work better than I can. We lunch 
together at least once a week, and he oftentimes 
accompanies me on my loafing trips. It is surpris¬ 
ing how much copy he gets out of conversations that 
seem rather ordinary to me at the time. 

“ Now, to come back to the thought I started 
with, I die every little while. I pretend that the 
end has come and I ask myself what I am doing that 
some one else could do just as well — or better. 
Since I contracted the habit of killing myself off, 
I have dropped one kind of work after another. 
Keeping in mind that I may drop off any minute, I 
have understudies ready not only for myself but for 
the other important men. We are all unnecessary. 
The result is our business never was better. We 
are all principals. Every one of our men carries 
a marshal’s baton in his haversack. The men under 
me seem to keep on saying every little while, 
‘ Here, you, get out of the way.’ And, in self¬ 
protection, I scramble up to a higher place and all 
the rest of the men move forward at the same time. 

Css] 



The Silver 'Lining or 


“ Not only do I share authority, but I share 
profits. The ‘ I ’ idea of business went out of our 
place years ago. Now it is always ‘ We.’ It hurts 
me every time I hear one of our men say ‘ I will 
do this or that ’ when speaking with a customer. 
He is supposed to say ‘ We will do that.’ The 
‘ We ’ spirit is what we have cultivated because we 
have realized that ‘ I ’ is a pretty small individual. 

“ So, my advice to my fellow business men is to 
commit suicide every little while. If they do the 
job honestly and in a workmanlike manner, they 
will find themselves constructing the ladder that 
will land them in heaven, not after they are in the 
grave, but right here on this good old earth of ours. 

“ I know that because I have killed myself many 
times I have life more abundantly. The same is 
true of the rest of the men in our plant. The idea 
of being healthy and happy and financially successful 
has been used all the way through. We have made 
our factory clean within and without. We have 
done everything we could think of to make it a 
pleasant place in which to work. We have interested 
ourselves in providing proper houses for our workers, 
and we have mixed in education, recreation, and 
nearly everything else. We are all happier, 
healthier, richer, and by the looks of things and by 
the report of the doctors who examine us periodically, 
we are all fit to put off the day when death will 

[56] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


step in and kill us off for the last time. But when 
that time does come, we’ll be prepared.” 

As I said in the beginning, maybe this man has 
foolish notions. There are a few of them and you 
can judge them for yourself by trying them out in 
your own life. 



When Clara Barton persuaded the school author¬ 
ities of Bordentown, N. J., to start a free public 
school there was great objections because, as she was 
told, parents would never send their children to a 
“ pauper school.” Even the so-called wise men of 
the place argued this way. When anything new is 
suggested it doesn’t pay anyone to say, “ It cannot 
be done.” So many persons who have said, ‘‘ It can¬ 
not be done,” have had themselves written down in 
history as plain damn fools. 



The Silver Lining or 


The Friendly Work 

Every day I bless my work because of the joy 
it brings to me. The men with whom I do business 
are more than mere business acquaintances. Most 
of them become personal friends. Even if we had 
no business connection I should want to know that 
they were in my life. They pay me money, it is 
true. And that money is necessary. But they pay 
me more than that. They pay me in the finer coin 
of their own personalities. I thihk that I am one 
of the richest men in the world. Life has been 
and is very good. 



One of the things all of us need to learn in this 
rushing age is to enjoy the little things more. Most 
big things are made out of a combination of little 
things, so naturally, if we enjoy the part intensely, we 
cannot help enjoying the whole. 





Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Truest Freedom 

We should keep no unaired chambers in the 
house of life. If sunshine has the power to wreck 
the structure, the structure should be wrecked. 
What we have done, we have done. All our 
thoughts and words and actions are wrapped up 
tightly, and we cannot drop any of them by the 
roadside. 

We may not wish to tell the whole truth about 
ourselves to the public, any more than we wish to 
kneel down on the city street to say our prayers, 
but every one who knows anything about us, whether 
good or bad, should have our permission to pass it on. 

In playing this game of life in the world we 
should be willing to toss all we have into the pot. 
Freedom is always denied those who are tied to 
secrets. 



No MAN who is unsuccessful at home can be a 
true success anywhere else. The place to be popu¬ 
lar first of all, is where one lives. The next place 
is where one works. 



Yes, sir, it is better to be a radiant center of 
good-will and neighborliness than a master of unit 
costs. 


C59] 



The Silver Lining or 


The Tale of Two Men 

One man said, “ I will store up facts'and give 
people information. They will honor me and be 
grateful.” 

Another man said, “ I will try to be a source of 
inspiration to folks by loving them and filling their 
hearts with laughter and good feeling. In doing 
this I shall have my reward.” 

From the first man the people took the informa¬ 
tion without thanks and went their several ways, 
but the second man they followed and loved and 
honored and to him they gave their hearts. 



It isn’t Well to have too much humility. The 
man who gets into the habit of refusing to take credit 
for good work he does is quite apt to be surprised 
when he discovers that people accept his denials as 
the truth. 


“ I REFUSE to believe the impossible,” exclaimed 
a friend of ours the other day. “ Why not.i* ” we 
asked. “ There is infinitely more fun in trying to 
believe the impossible than in believing the possible.” 

[;6o] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Making of an Executive 

A FRIEND of mine tries to carry all the burdens 
of his business on his own shoulders. In his em¬ 
ploy were some young men whom he intended to 
trust with responsibility within a year or so. 

Without warning he was taken sick and sent to 
the hospital. It was thought for a time he would 
not live. A business friend was given power of 
attorney and went in to look after his business. 
This man knew nothing about the details of the 
business. He admitted this freely to the young men 
and said to them, “ You fellows go ahead and do 
what you think ought to be done.” In two months 
my friend was back in his office. 

“ Being sick had its advantages,” he said to me. 
“ My business is now where I hoped it would be a 
year from now. My young men grew under the 
responsibility placed upon them and my affairs are 
in better shape than they ever were before.” 

The executive who does not delegate responsi¬ 
bility is a criminal. He is robbing his subordinates 
of their right to develop themselves, and he is rob¬ 
bing his business of the strength and wisdom which 
responsibility would give them. 


1:61 3 



The Silver Lining or 


Sandpaper 

You tell me that there are many unpleasant 
things troubling you in your place of work. If you 
can answer without betraying a secret, would you 
mind telling me if you ever knew of velvet being 
used successfully as a substitute for sandpaper? The 
unpleasant, the hard, the trying, the temper-testing 
things are the sandpapery aids that smooth you off, 
that train you, that fit you to shoulder bigger re¬ 
sponsibilities and to resist more trying troubles later 
on. So be very thankful for the sandpaper. 



A CARTOON clipped from a penny newspaper may 
do the soul more good than the most learned sermon. 
A penciled note on a printed paragraph an inch long 
may open one’s eyes to more knowledge than one 
often finds packed between the covers of a preten¬ 
tious book. To know these truths is to know the 
trail that leads to Wisdom. 


When you are sure that your troubles are greater 
than Job’s, just try to think what troubles made you 
feel the same way a year ago. 

1:62] 




Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Self Expression 

The more I study, the more I think, the more 
I learn of men and women, the more passionately 
do I preach the gospel of self-expression. As the 
sun invites the buds to burst into flowers, as it draws 
the plants from the darkness of the earth, as its 
caresses call the life sap through the trunks of the 
trees, so would I have my writing and my life invite 
men and women out of the darkness that enfolds 
them and into the sunshine and the warmth of the 
joy that comes from the fullest self-expression. 
God’s commands, I feel sure, are sent to us in the 
form of desires. That which we desire to do with 
all our strength, that which we most love to do, is 
what God wants us to do. 


Oftentimes no greater mistake can be made in 
an organization than to “ clean out the old-timers.” 
Let them be judged by the service they render, not 
by their gray hair and the wrinkles on their face. 



Weeds are only flowers that are not fully under¬ 
stood. Sins are often virtues in disguise. 

[633 



The Silver Lining or 


Carving Jade 

Many of us in business and out of it like to enter¬ 
tain the thought that we are courageous. We feel 
like congratulating ourselves when we plunge into 
enterprises, the outcome of which is in doubt. This 
is true especially when the chances we take are great. 

Courageous as some of us are, however, I am 
quite sure that few of us have the courage of these 
Chinese artists who carve jade. 

I was reading the other day that when an unusually 
large piece of jade is found in China a council of 
artists is called to determine into what shape it had 
best be carved. 

If the artist chosen to perform the delicate task 
succeeds he will be highly honored and rewarded. 
His success, however, depends upon his work being 
approved after it has been subjected to public ap¬ 
proval for a whole year. If the public does not 
approve of his work, his reputation as an artist is 
lost forever. 

It is said that twenty years has not been considered 
too long for a single piece of carving. 

How many of us would be willing to take the 
chance that such an artist takes? 

On the other hand, isn’t it worth while to take 
such a chance to give to the world another bit of 
almost imperishable beauty? 

1:643 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Why Try to Be a Red Rag? 

I NEVER could see very much good in mixing with 
people with whom I couldn’t mix pleasantly. Very 
little is gained by forcing oneself to like people. 

In a world that contains so many folks who do 
mix with us pleasantly, why should we go out of 
our way to find people who raise the devil in us 
every time we see them. 

A red rag never becomes popular in the sight of 
a bull, so what is the use of flaunting that red rag 
in the bull’s face. 

When I don’t like people I stay away from them 
— and stay away from them in such a way that they 
never discover that I am staying away from them. 

There is no great wisdom in advertising the fact 
that one is avoiding a person. 



Someone tells the story of the woman standing 
at the rear end of a train crying as she waved fare¬ 
well to her friends in the town she was leaving. Her 
little son watched her crying for a time and then 
said earnestly: “ Don’t look back, mother; look 
ahead.” That is advice that many of us need when 
we are wasting the glorious present in weeping for 
what is past. 

[65] 



The Silver Lining or 


Capitalize Your Curiosity 

Every normal young person is afire with curi¬ 
osity. If you are an employer, you should encour¬ 
age these instinctive desires in your workers. Urge 
them to ask questions and show them where the 
correct answers can be obtained. Cultivate in them 
an abiding interest in those things in your business 
that appeal to them. In every person is an instinc¬ 
tive desire for growth, for development, for larger 
usefulness. Surround your workers with conditions 
favorable to their growth and, perhaps to your own 
surprise, the results you will secure will be 

miraculous. 

« 


I HAVE been writing in the living-room and be¬ 
tween paragraphs have been looking out at the pines. 
The sight of those trees steadies me. They are 
so calm, so untroubled. From this window today 
no human habitation is visible. A mist has hidden 
the houses across the lake. It is easy to imagine 
oneself far out in the country. How silly the cities 
and their problems seem today! 


[:66] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Are You an Elephant? 

A CERTAIN executive tried to explain his failure 
to co-operate with another executive by saying: 

“ When Blank came with this company he did 
so and so. Everyone knows that that was a fool 
thing to do. I made up my mind then that I would 
have nothing more to do with him.” 

What a perfectly asinine, senseless, narrow- 
gauged, picayunish remark! 

What chance would any man have in this world 
if all his transgressions were held against him? 

The elephant, a big, bulky beast, with a small 
brain, never forgets an injury. It holds things 
against people until the very end of its life. 

Judging by the remark made by the executive 
quoted in the opening paragraph, there are in 
existence elephant-minded men — men who are a 
menace to any organization of which they are a 
part. 

Some wise man wrote a long time ago: ‘‘ In a 
world where death is there is no time for hatred.” 

In any organization ^ where there is so much con¬ 
structive work to be done, and where this work 
can be done successfully only through the closest 
and most harmonious co-operation, no one has time 
to hold grudges. 

None of us is perfect. The man who goes about 

[673 



The Silver Lining or 


holding grudges against others need not be surprised 
when he discovers the old law of compensation is 
getting in its work, and other people are holding 
grudges against him. 

The good executive is a man who makes many 
decisions, some of which are right. 

The fellow who does things, who has initiative, 
who has ideals and wants to materialize them, is 
bound to slip now and then. When he slips there 
is no reason why he should be damned for all eter¬ 
nity by those who, standing off on the standard path, 
had no difficulty in standing upright. 

The next time you hear a man telling about the 
mistakes of an associate ask him this question: “ Are 
you an elephant.? ” 



To BE popular at home is a great achievement. 
The man who is loved by the house cat, by the dog, 
by the neighbors’ children, and by his own wife is 
a great man, even if he never has had his name in 
“ Who’s Who.” 



The beauty you find in a flower or in some jewel 
or landscape is the beauty of your own mind. With¬ 
out this inner beauty there can be no outer beauty. 
The world you live in is the world you are. 

C683 




Sunshine on the Business Trail 


My Daily Desire 

To awaken each morning with a smile bright¬ 
ening my face; to greet the day with reverence for 
the opportunities it contains; to approach my work 
with a clear mind; to hold ever before me, even in 
the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose 
towards which I am working; to meet men and 
women with laughter on my lips and love in my 
heart; to be gentle and kind and courteous through 
all the hours; to approach the night with the weari¬ 
ness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from 
work well done. 



How fortunate are those men and women who 
have mastered the art of expressing their love for 
other people. They give freely of themselves, tell 
those they love of that love, and are a joy to this 
gray old world, where there are so many who hide 
their emotions. 

Believe in yourself, your neighbors, your work, 
your own ultimate attainment of more complete hap¬ 
piness. It is only the farmer who faithfully plants 
seeds in the spring, who reaps a harvest in the 



autumn. 


[69] 



The Silver Lining or 


What Aristotle Said 

Four hundred and some odd years B. C. there 
lived in Athens a wise man by the name of 
Aristotle. He was the teacher of Alexander, who 
cried because he could find no more worlds to 
conquer. 

Aristotle said, what other wise men through the 
ages have said, that all men seek one goal — success, 
or happiness. 

And he said, “ The only way to achieve true suc¬ 
cess is to express yourself completely in service to 
society.” 

Then he gave these success rules: They are worth 
real money to any business man who does not know 
them. 

First: Have a definite, clearly seen, practicable 
ideal — a goal, an objective point. 

Second: Have the necessary means to achieve your 
ends — materials, money, methods, machinery, etc. 

Third: Adjust your means to your end. That 
means, do not chop wood with a mallet, sprinkle 
flowers with a fire hose, talk French to one who 
does not understand it, etc. 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Invading Host 

As THE ancient nations, drunk with power and 
the rich things of the earth, rotten with the filth 
of materialism, proved themselves dominated by the 
philosophy of the pigsty, they disappeared, and men 
found them no more at all. So shall the business 
institutions of our time, mad with profit-lust, un¬ 
vitalized by the spiritual wealth of ideals of service, 
expressing themselves like preying animals of the 
jungles, give way before the invading hosts of those 
who fight under the banner of Service. They shall 
weep and mourn because “ no man buyeth their mer¬ 
chandise any more,” for “ with their sorcery were 
all the nations deceived.” 



Great business leaders want two kinds of asso¬ 
ciates: first, those to whom they entrust their ideals; 
second, those who help them make money. They 
look upon the money earners as being of a lower 
order. These they do not take into spiritual partner¬ 
ship. They may share money with such associates, 
but they will not share their highest aspirations. The 
money earners are servants employed to help acquire 
capital to be used in carrying through projects sug¬ 
gested by the so-called impractical dreamers. 

1:71] 



The Silver Lining or 


Make Friends 

“ If I were asked to give advice to a group of 
young folks who wanted to get ahead in business,” 
said a successful old man to me the other day, “ I 
would simply say: Make friends. Looking back over 
a long life, I can see that much of what the world 
calls my success is due very largely to what my 
friends did for me. As I sat here before the fire 
the other night I let my mind run back, and it was 
with surprise that I learned that many of the things 
which in my youth I had credited to my ability'as a 
business man came to me because I had made influ¬ 
ential friends who did things for me because they 
liked me. The man who is right has the kind of 
friends who are attracted by his wrongness. A man 
gets what he is.” 



Keep your mind filled with creative thoughts and 
we will all be squeezing your hand and congratulat¬ 
ing you for one thing or another — possibly for 
making good with the manhood that is yours. And 
that, as you know, is a devil of a big accomplishment 
— better than leading the sales force, writing a suc¬ 
cessful play or a best seller, or performing any other 
stunt that wins the plaudits of the mob. 


[170 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


A Polisher of Lenses 

A MAN who dared to live simply and to refuse 
positions of honor was Spinoza. His spirit had much 
to do with moulding the philosophic thought of the 
19th century. He earned his living by making 
lenses. These the world wanted. It cared little 
for his ideas. His neighbors thought him irreligious. 
Once an assassin tried to stab him. He possessed 
few material things, yet he was never poor. By 
dedicating himself to a life of thought he became 
one of the master-thinkers of the religious and philo¬ 
sophic world. Money, except what little he needed 
to supply his simple wants, was of no value in his 
eyes. The “ practical ” men of his time called him 
a failure. Their names are forgotten. His name 
lives as the “ God-intoxicated man.” 

How many polishers of lenses — men engaged in 
simple tasks — are working in the world today, un¬ 
known to fame, whose thoughts will thrill the gen¬ 
erations yet unborn? How unsafe it is to judge 
the value of the work of other men! 



It is indeed true, as some wise man has said, that 
many persons who are busy are only picking up the 
beans they have spilled. 

[731 



The Sliver 'Lining or 


More Powerful Than Kings 

What a wonderful opportunity an executive in 
a big business institution has to influence the lives 
of thousands of men and women! Few profes¬ 
sional preachers have as great an opportunity. The 
great executive is more powerful than kings. From 
him goes forth an influence which manifests itself in 
. thousands of homes. A business builder today also 
must be a man builder. 



A BIG bumble bee came in through the window 
a while ago and for ten minutes or so tried his best 
to butt his foolish head through the glass. If the 
insect had any sense he would have settled down 
somewhere and looked about for an opening, instead 
of making such an infernal racket. He reminds 
me of some men I know. 


When we give a man our confidence, when we 
believe in him, when we express our faith in him 
and his work, we make easier all his tasks and 
lighten his load and remove, or help remove, the 
greatest obstacle on his road to success. 

[743 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Folks Who Fear Lighthouses 

A New England citizen who lived on a dangerous 
coast told Ralph Waldo Emerson that he found 
resistance to the project of building a lighthouse on 
that coast, “ as it would injure the wrecking 
business.” 

Ships were wrecked on that coast every little while 
and the people living thereabouts profited by it. 
Thinking only of themselves, they very naturally 
opposed the building of a lighthouse. A lighthouse 
would have served by saving ships. It would have 
interfered with a profitable local business. 

To those narrow natives the Rights of Things 
were of more importance than the Rights of Persons. 
In their eyes, material wealth came first. People 
who were landed safely, or ships that were warned 
away from danger, were not profitable. Wrecked 
ships were profitable. Therefore, no lighthouse. 

The whole world now demands that the Rights of 
Persons be placed before the Rights of Things. 
Autocratic business which existed for the profit of the 
few at the cost of the lives of the many must go — 
just as the Czar of Russia went. 

The change in business can be made by the pres¬ 
ent owners — made without loss to them. All they 
need to do is to set up in their plants the necessary 
social machinery which will establish right relations. 



The Silver Lining or 


When right relations between the management and 
the workers are established, both are safe. 

The first thing to do is to establish means of com¬ 
munication. The management must be able to get 
ideas to the workers, and the workers must be given 
the same opportunities to get their ideas to the man¬ 
agement. That will do for a start. That will 
serve as a lighthouse. It will drive away the dark¬ 
ness and the dangers of darkness. 

In the light men who are willing to work to¬ 
gether can accomplish much. 



The executive who flies into a rage every time 
his subordinates displease him discovers, as he goes 
along, that unless he flies into a rage he can’t get 
any results at all. The other night at the theatre I 
saw a violinist still a chattering audience by muting 
his strings. 



Those of us who are wise will do most of our 
thinking about the present and the future because, 
as Blanche E. Nowell says, “ If we turn back and 
try to live in the past, we will travel until we are 
lost in the mists of time.” 





Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Fragrant Life 

I AM told that visitors to the mosque of St. 
Sophia, in Constantinople, are greeted with fragrance 
when they enter the building. This fragrance per¬ 
vades the entire place because when the mosque was 
built a thousand years ago the stones and bricks were 
laid in mortar mixed with a solution of musk. If 
we, in our youth, build our years out of helpful, 
friendly, neighborly acts, we will offer to the world 
the fragrance of lovable personalities when we go 
down the farther slope. I am thinking, too, that 
even after we have passed away, as the builders of 
this mosque have passed away, our works will go 
on living for us and praising us. 



We ought to be very careful how we stand up 
and make objections to suggestions that seem to be 
progressive. You may remember that Richard 
Henry Lee objected to the Constitution because, 
among other things, “ Many citizens will be more 
than 300 miles from the seat of this government.” 

Become a master of words and you will find it 
easier to become a master of men. 

t77l 




The Silver Lining or 


The Rock Hauler 

A COUPLE of workmen drove into the yard a 
few moments ago with a load of stone for a new 
wall we are building. I went out to talk with them. 

As the cart was tilted up and the rocks came tum¬ 
bling out I asked, “ Did you ever get hurt handling 
rocks that way? ” 

“ Yes, indeed, sir,” answered.one of the Irishmen, 
“ IVe been handling stone for 30 years and have 
been hurt many times. Look what happened to me 
26 years ago.” At that he stooped down, rolled up 
his trousers and showed me where his leg had been 
broken just below the knee. I saw an open wound. 

“ Has that thing been open 26 years? ” I asked, 
increduously. 

“ Oh, no,” he answered, laughing as if it were 
a good joke, “ that’s from another crack I received 
a few days ago.” 

Then he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye 
and said, “ You know, sir, we’ve got to expect just 
so many hurts as we go through this life.” 



Just remember that the supply of good cannot 
be exhausted and you, if you are a worker and not 
a shirker, will get your share. 

Cysj 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Is This an Executive You Know? 

As I sat looking at him it suddenly flashed upon 
me that if the news came to his associates tomorrow 
morning that he had died suddenly the night before, 
not one of them would shed a tear or feel even for 
an instant a sense of personal loss. To them he 
has been a machine, hard, unfair, unjust, unlovable. 

Not once has he tried to persuade his associates to 
care for him. In their minds he is associated with 
unpleasant things. 

His entrance into a room is like a cloud passing 
across the face of the sun. The sound of his voice 
over the telephone carries no delight to the ear of 
the hearer. When he goes away, his associates 
utter a fervent and heartfelt ‘‘Thank God! ” and 
when he returns, gloom settles down and men look 
furtively at one another. 

I have sometimes wondered if he ever gives a 
thought to what his associates think of him — or if 
he cares. Some day he will die. And no one will 
care very much. Behind him he will leave a repu¬ 
tation as a maker of money. His family may en¬ 
joy what he leaves them. But in the eyes of his 
fellow-workers there will be no tears, and in their 
hearts will be no sorrow at his going. 



The Silver Lining or 


Experience Taught Me This 

To BE happy is my main job. Experience has 
taught me that I am happiest when I am doing most 
to add to the happiness of others. Such help, of 
course, must be rendered not as a duty but as a 
pleasure. There’s a lot of difference, you know, 
between being hatefully helpful and lovingly help¬ 
ful. Has your experience taught you this — or 
hasn’t it? 



So MANY men take pride in being called hard 
workers. I prefer to be called an easy worker. I 
know some hard workers who accomplish little and 
I know some easy workers who accomplish much. 
Let us judge men by their accomplishments, not by 
the way they work. 



I FIND it easier and easier to find contentment in 
the riches of the mind. Take from me all the so- 
called riches of the world and leave me imagination 
and I shall still be rich; but give me all the wealth 
of the world and take from me my imagination and 
you will plunge me deep into the bottomless pit of 
indescribable misery. 


CsoH 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Making Money Happily 

One man of our acquaintance earns $15,000 a 
year. Another man we know just as well, earns 
$3,000. 

If you were asked to tell us which is the more 
successful, the chances are, ten to one, that you 
would answer, “Why the one who earns $15,000 
a year.” 

If you made that answer you would be wrong. 
No man’s success can be measured by the size of his 
income. 

It happens that the $15,000 man spends far more 
than he earns. He is in debt all the time and if 
his income ceased for any reason he would be dead 
broke. 

The other man who earns only $3,000 a year, not 
only lives within his income, but carries a life in¬ 
surance policy for the protection of his family, and 
as a result of his thrifty habits, has $10,000 scat- 
* tered around in various savings banks, and in one 
co-operative society. 

Perhaps more important than the money this sec¬ 
ond man has, is the peace of mind that is his. He 
has played the game of life according to the rules 
and is conscious of the fact that he has done good 
work. He enjoys life because his mind is not clut¬ 
tered up with worries over debts and other negative 
things. 


ISil 



The Silver Lining or 


** The Great Sharer 

Mrs. Douglas Robinson said in one of her talks 
that she had been searching for two or three words 
which would express adequately what her brother 
Theodore Roosevelt was, and at last hit upon them 
— “The Great Sharer.” What a splendid tribute! 
We ought to ask ourselves each day, “ Am I shar¬ 
ing myself as generously as I might? Am I giving 
myself freely or am I holding back? ” Roosevelt 
demonstrated that the great giver is the great getter. 



The man who thinks it is his business to defeat 
his competitors is wrong. His competitors are not 
his enemies. They happen to be workers in the 
same field. The most efficient competitor offers 
the greatest inspiration to the business man who is 
keen enough to see that his job is to serve his public. 
The wise man looks upon competitors as co- 
operators. 



There is no finer profession than one which com¬ 
pels us to build faith into the minds of men. In 
business faith is needed quite as much as money. 


1182] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Why Have Ideals? 

For fear that something may happen to me to 
prevent me from answering that question I will 
delay no longer but will give it to you now: Be¬ 
cause it pays to have them. 

What does that mean? Do they pay in dollars 
and cents, or merely those intangible rewards such 
as promises of a golden harp and jeweled crown in 
a heaven hereafter? 

I know nothing whatever about a life hereafter. 
Neither does anyone else. What will happen to me 
after I have finished my work as TD troubles me 
not at all. My belief is that one world at a time 
is sufficient to keep even the 'most energetic and 
versatile man busy. 

What does concern me, and what probably con¬ 
cerns you, is the winning of heaven right here and 
now. And heaven on earth, as I see it, belongs to 
the man or woman who has three things: Fame, 
Love and Fortune. 

The famous man has done something useful. He 
may be internationally famous, like Hoover, or he 
may be locally famous like the village blacksmith, 
garage man or owner of the general store. He fills 
the niche for which he was created and does it so 
well that his fellow citizens give him recognition. 


1:83] 



The Silver Lining or 


That goes for the man who has served. A man also 
may be famous for doing ill. 

Which brings us to love. The man who has 
won and who holds the love, the affection, the gen¬ 
uine, friendship of his fellows has something worth 
even more than fame. It means that he has given 
himself to them, has helped them, has made their 
lives richer and more colorful. Jesus did that. 
Nearly every community has men and women whose 
lives have endeared them to their fellows. 

Fortune has many meanings. To one man it is 
a steady job that pays $5 a day. To another it is 
$10,000,000. Reduced to its lowest terms, it 
means an amount of money sufficient to guarantee 
to its owner the three primary requisites, food, cloth¬ 
ing and shelter. Fortune for happiness means an 
amount of money sufficient for the needs of one to 
carry out one’s ideas for rendering service to 
humanity. 

Now carry the thought through for yourself. 


The truly efficient executive is he who makes his 
important decisions in advance of the time when 
those decisions are needed. 


[84] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The By-Law 

Those of us who have been bored stiff at so many 
public meetings by people who thought they knew 
how to talk interestingly, but were in reality nui¬ 
sances, will appreciate the thought of the little girl 
in Revere, Mass. 

Marguerite Kerr tells us that the children in one 
of the sixth grades decided' to form an English club 
and a little girl was delegated to draw up the con¬ 
stitution and by-laws. She proved herself wonder¬ 
fully adapted to the commission, for incorporated in 
her by-laws was the following which might well be 
legislated for all public gatherings: 

“ Those that can make speeches shall do so. Those 
that cannot make speeches shall keep still.” 



Of course a temper-loser can get results, so can 
a hand-grenade or a bomb. The sun gets results 
without indulging in explosions. It produces re¬ 
sults by the exercise of great drawing power. 

The great executive is a drawer, not a driver. 



Success in business, success in any line, is never a 
bequest; it is always a conquest. 

css] 



The Silver Lining or 


Why Worry? 

Why do we all worry so? Why do we fret and 
say the world is not treating us right and make our¬ 
selves disagreeable to everyone by unnecessary 
lamentation? 

Things are so easy if analyzed. The hard part 
is to stick to the analysis. Don’t you think these 
lines sum up, briefly yet with so much truth and un¬ 
derstanding, just what the world and his wife needs 
today ? 

A little more kindness and a little less creed; 

A little more giving and a little less greed; 

A little more smile and a little less frown; 

A little less kicking a man when he’s down; 

A little more “we” and a little less “I”; 

A little more laugh and a little less cry; 

A little more flowers on the pathway of Life; 

And fewer on graves at the end of the strife. 

When your burdens grow too heavy for you, you 
can do one of two things. You can either throw off 
part of your load or, under the stimulation of in¬ 
spiration, find new strength which will make your 
burdens seem light. 



Even the mean man has his value. You can 
learn from him how not to live. 

1:86] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Lovers of Good 

\ 

I HAVE a little sympathy for the reformers who 
are concentrating their efforts upon restraining people 
from doing evil. My heart goes out to those workers 
who are trying to make this world a happy, joyous, 
clean place. All we need to do to overcome the 
so-called evil is to increase the amount of good. It 
is love that conquers hate — not hatred of hate. We 
gain nothing at all by hating evil. The hater is a 
poisoner of himself. The lover of good is the ma¬ 
gician who is working in harmony with divine law. 


The most interesting conversationalists I ever have 
known did not pretend to be conversationalists at all. 
In fact, it was with difficulty that they were per¬ 
suaded to talk and when they did speak it was about 
the work they loved. Only the other day I heard 
a literary man condemn a business man because all 
the latter talked about was business, whereas the writer 
wanted to talk about authors and their works. Even 
now I don’t believe my literary friend knows why 
I laughed at his condemnation of the business man ' 
he was criticising. 


1:87: 



The Silver Lining or 


A Sermon on a Bee 

When some of your salesmen and managers com¬ 
plain that it is hard to make sales, and report that 
it is impossible to find buyers for your products, 
remind them that a clover blossom contains less than 
one-eighth of a grain of sugar, that seven thousand 
grains are required to make a pound of honey, that 
a vagabond bee, seeking everywhere for sweetness, 
must obtain this material from fifty-six thousand 
clover heads. 

Tell them, too, that the bee is compelled to insert 
its proboscis separately into each floret or flower-tube, 
and that there are about sixty of these to each head. 

Remind them that the bee, in performing that 
operation sixty times fifty-six thousand, or three mil¬ 
lion three hundred and sixty times, gets only enough 
nectar for one pound of honey — and then doesn’t 
get the honey. 

The bee has preached another sermon. 

It is time for some of us to learn what work 
really is. 



The man who cannot be efficient in his home 
management isn’t likely to be efficient in managing 
a business institution. 


CSS] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Stones in Their Shoes 

Walking around our town one Sunday afternoon 
a neighbor and I were talking about some men we 
know. Passing the house of one of the men, I said: 
“That fellow in there isn’t very happy, is he? ” 

“ No,” answered my neighbor. “ He always has 
a stone in his shoe and flies buzzing around his head 
as he goes passing through the world.” 

I still chuckle as I think of what an accurate 
description this is of the man. He has never mas¬ 
tered the art of living comfortably. The world 
does not seem to fit him, nor does he fit the world. 

There are altogether too many men who go about 
looking as if they had stones in their shoes. 



■ I USED to waste a great deal of time arguing with 
persons who did not agree with me. Of late I have 
been spending so much time in the open air, asso¬ 
ciating with the trees, the sky, the lake, the hills 
and the eternal rocks, that the arguments in which 
men indulge seem foolish. To win an argument 
is no great achievement. 


1:893 



The Silver Lining or 


The Invisible Advertisement 

Fire broke out in the Middlesex Fells last fall. 
If it had burned on the surface the caretakers would 
have had no trouble. Day after day the men went 
home thinking that they had conquered, only to dis¬ 
cover that the fire had been following dry roots 
and vegetable matter and would come to the sur¬ 
face several rods away from where it stopped burn¬ 
ing on the surface. 

The same thing happens in business. Customers 
that buy one’s product or service are like the flames 
that can be seen by the fire fighters. The fire un¬ 
derground is the mouth-to-ear advertising that is 
given one’s product or service by people who receive 
their impressions from the customers. Every cus¬ 
tomer or client is a living advertisement. Whether 
the copy is good or bad depends upon the quality of 
our product or service. We get what we give. 



Business institutions succeed only when the in¬ 
dividuals in them render efficient service to the 
public. Labor unions will achieve increasing and 
permanent success only when union laborers express 
in their work standards of service higher than those 
of unorganized laborers. 

1:90] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Trees and Men 

I WAS walking in the New Hampshire woods 
recently and noted that the heavy snow had bent 
down the birches during the winter. Those that 
were young had recovered, but those that were old, 
or were rotten at the heart, did not come back. 
Their tops still touched the ground. I thought, as 
I looked at those trees, how like men they are. 
Men who are young and healthy, recover quickly 
from troubles and burdens laid upon them, but men 
who are old or who have weakened themselves by the 
kind of lives they lead, find themselves unable to 
spring back after the burdens have been removed. 



In looking back I can see clearly that during 
those times when I was most generous to the world, 
the world was most generous to me. It is cer¬ 
tainly true that the law compels the giver to be¬ 
come the receiver. Only when I have not given 
have I felt the pinch of poverty. 



Because you lack a noble and successful past 
is no real reason why you should lack a noble and 
successful future. 


1:913 



1 


The Silver Lining or 


The Poverty of Unawareness 

A GREATER poverty than that caused by lack of 
money is the poverty of unawareness. Men and 
women go about the world unaware of the beauty, 
the goodness, the glories in it. Their souls are poor. 
It is better to have a poor pocketbook than to suffer 
from a poor soul. 



One business man introduced the home element 
into his office by buying a number of house plants 
and turning them over to his stenographers to care 
for. The flowers brightened up the office, and the 
girls took a greater interest in their work after they 
were given something to look after that apparently 
had no relation to their routine duties. 


There may be greater worth in an hour’s loafing, 
looking up at the sky, than in a month’s study of the 
wisdom of the ancients. 


C90 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Andrew Carnegie*s Rabbits 

Although he was poorer than the proverbial 
church mouse when he was a boy in Scotland, 
Andrew Carnegie knew human nature well enough 
to be able to get what he wanted with his insignifi¬ 
cant material assets. One of his chief childhood 
enjoyments was the keeping of pigeons and rabbits. 
To secure food for these pets he needed help. He 
persuaded his boy friends to spend the Saturday 
holiday gathering dandelions and clover for his rab¬ 
bits, the compensations being that the young rabbits 
when such came should be named after the boys 
who helped. Later in life he said his conscience 
reproved him for driving such a bargain, but the 
truth was he gave the only reward at his disposal. 
He also said he treasured the remembrance of the 
plan as the earliest evidence of his organizing power. 



The world always asks this question, “ What have 
you given? ” not “What have you got? ” Give 
yourself and get happiness. 



The game of success is never a game of solitaire. 

1:93] 


i 



The Silver 'Lining or 


Are You Doing What You Want to Do? 

Are you doing with your life just what you want 
to do with it? Are you doing the work you most 
love to do? If you could be what you want to be, 
what kind of a man would you be? 

If you aren’t doing what you want to do and 
if you aren’t the kind of a man you want to be, 
why aren’t you? Put the reasons down on paper 
and see if they don’t look foolish to you. 

In the majority of instances a man can do what 
he pleases with himself. Things that get in your 
path are not obstacles unless you choose to regard 
them as obstacles. 

One of the great truths is that there is always 
a way through, over, under, or around any 
obstacle. 

You can get what you desire and in just the 
measure of that desire. 


C94] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Persistency 

Six times a spider has spun its web outside my 
study window and six times I have destroyed it. 
Tomorrow morning I’m sure it will be there again. 

To prevent a spider from spinning its web time 
after time in the same place one has to kill the spider. 

If we, who are interested in selling goods, had the 
persistency of spiders, we’d amount to something, 
wouldn’t we? 



Average human beings and circus animals have 
much in common. An animal trainer says that his 
charges resent changes and sulk for days when any¬ 
thing in their act is changed without their approval. 
Efficiency engineers and executives have learned this 
same truth in dealing with employees. When asked 
to change methods that have become habitual the 
average worker regards it almost as a personal insult. 


Australia is proud of the fact that out of a popu¬ 
lation of 5,500,000, 2,442,284 have money in 
Australian savings banks. The people of our own 
country will have to go some to catch up with the 
Australians. 


C953 



The Silver Lining or 


* 


Be a Mixer 

The other night as I sat before the fireplace I 
noted that the stick of wood, although it was a fine, 
dry piece of oak, was not burning. I tossed another 
piece of wood beside it and in a moment both burst 
into flame. What is it the Bible says to the general 
effect that it is not good for man to be alone? A 
man, no matter how good his quality, must mix with 
others if he would express himself most efficiently. 
One stick would not burn. Two sticks together 
sent out heat and light. There are sermons in fire¬ 
places as well as in runhing brooks. 



Why should I try to hide from you the fact 
that my object in life is to play all the time? I am 
thinking now of what Sir James Barrie said to some 
young people one time when he was talking about 
work. ‘‘ It isn’t real work,” he said, “ unless you 
would rather be doing something else.” 


1:963 



Sunshine on the Business Trail , 


The Days of Gold 

The age we live in is a golden age if we only 
have the vision with whidi to see the gold. And 
every day, as Emerson said, is the best day in the 
year. Do we not have the experience of looking 
back upon what were to us commonplace adventures 
and finding that they were filled with a glory we 
did not suspect? The thing to do is to look upon 
every day as a day of adventure — greet each new 
dawn with an awakening sense of wonder. What 
color will this new day bring into our life? What 
new friend? What new vein of gold will we dis¬ 
cover in some old acquaintance? The possibilities 
are endless. 



Your happiness depends upon what you think, 
not upon what you own. As Abraham Lincoln said: 
“ I have noticed that folks are generally as happy 
as they have made up their minds to be.” 


Three-fourths of the mistakes a man makes 
are made because he does not really know the things 
he thinks he knows. 


/ 


Z97l 



The Silver Lining or 


Jay Gould's Bad Advice 

It is well for young people early in life to learn 
not to place too much faith in advice given them by 
men who have themselves achieved success. 

When Edward W. Bok, for instance, told Jay 
Gould he wanted to enter the publishing business, 
the Wall Street wizard replied, “ You are making 
a great mistake.” 

If a young man enters a business he loves most 
it isn’t likely he will go wrong. Even when a 
man makes money at a business he hates, he has 
achieved for himself a failure and not a success. 



Every man should aim to be a master egotist. 
He must believe, with all the intensity of his being, 
that he can render at least one service to the world 
better than any other man. Then he must make 
good. 



The very first process in getting things done is to 
think that you can do them. The next step is to put 
legs and arms and eyes and fingers to work to back 
this thought of yours. 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Tail of the Burro 

When I am tempted to save something because 
there is a remote possibility that it may come in 
handy some day I remember that when George 
W. Coleman was in his thirties he fell sick with 
scarlet fever and when he was convalescing he 
thought it would be well to spend some of his time 
sorting out some of the stuff he had saved when he 
was in his early twenties. In the collection was 
an envelope on the outside of which George had 
written shortly after his twentieth birthday, “ This 
envelope contains some hair taken from the tail of 
the burro upon which I rode up Pike’s Peak.” 


One reason why P. F. Sullivan is such a success¬ 
ful executive is because he has sense enough not to 
give orders to associates who respond more quickly 
to suggestions. He prefers to get people to do things 
because they want to do them not because they have 
been ordered to do them. 



One thing is sure, you cannot create good busi¬ 
ness by thinking and talking bad business. 

1:99: 



1 > ; 




The Silver Lining or 


The Magic of Thought 

A MAN came in yesterday to tell me that he had 
lost his job. He tried to be a good sport but it was 
easy to see that he was very miserable. I knew 
something about the job he had held and even more 
about the company he had been with. My own feel¬ 
ing was the job was a good one to lose. I said this 
to my discouraged acquaintance. In a few moments 
his eyes lost their dulness, his face lit up, and he 
went away acting like a man who had received a 
promotion. Such is the magic of thought. He was 
no better off materially when he left than he had 
been when he came in. All that had happened to 
him was that his thinking had changed. Many men 
have to lose their jobs in order that they may find 
themselves. 



Do NOT wage war against your so-called bad 
qualities and evil habits. Rather increase that which 
is good in you and the evil, as^you will quickly dis¬ 
cover, will cease to be. 


C100 3 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Best Business Man 

As a business man — and a practical one at that — 
I believe that the highest ideal is the best for the 
building of profitable business. I would have all 
workers think the best thoughts, speak the best words, 
associate with the best people, read the best books, 
and model their lives after the best man. 

And I know of no Man greater than the One of 
whom it was written, “ And all the multitude sought 
to touch Him; for power came forth from Him, 
and healed them all.” 

I would like our institutions to be filled with men 
so good and so great that the multitude would seek 
to touch them. The best man is the best business 
man. 



We get what we need when we need it. Which 
is not the same as saying that we get what we want 
when we want it. 



He is a wise man who learns early in life to give 
other men a chance to make some of the money 
being made in the world. 


t loi 3 



The Silver Lining or 


« 


The Keys to Success Town 

Before performing any act, great or small, ask 
yourself these questions and you will find in your 
hands the Master Keys that will give you entrance 
into Success Town: What shall I do? Why should 
I do this? How shall I do this? When shall I do 
this? Have a good reason for all your acts and all 
the powers of concentrated wealth, fate, bad luck, 
enemies, chiggers, hookworms, and unkind gods 
cannot prevent you from winning for yourself 
permanent and increasing success. And success is 
happiness. 



In the heart of every man is the desire to express 
his mental and physical power in rendering greater 
service to his fellows. That desire may be un¬ 
awakened, it may be weak, or it may be the domi¬ 
nating factor in a man’s life. But that it exists in 
every man is certain. To awaken this desire and 
give it its fullest growth should be the aim of every 
executive. 



Place a high value on yourself and then prove 
that you are worth it. 


c 1023 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Right Lenses 

When the new non-glare lens rules were put into 
effect some time ago I asked our traffic officer down 
at the square here in Winchester if mine were all 
right, and he, after looking them all over, told me 
they were. 

For several months thereafter I drove around 
without giving any further thought to those lenses 
until one night I left the car parked near the 
Touraine where Snug and Frank Gilbreth and I 
had dined before going to the theatre. After the 
theatre when I got into the car I found a salmon- 
colored tag attached to my wheel which told me that 
my lenses were illegal. 

Being a law-abiding citizen at times, I got a set 
of new lenses the next day and — here is the whole 
nub of the story — my lamps gave more light than 
they ever did before. 

I said to myself, “ Why didn’t I have sense 
enough to do the legal thing months ago? I cer¬ 
tainly am glad that inspector put that salmon-colored 
tag on my steering-wheel.” 

Every man who goes up against man-made laws 
may not have exactly the same experience that I 
had in this, but it is certain that every man who 
disobeys natural laws pays the penalty for his dis¬ 


c 1033 



The Silver Lining or 


obedience and every man who obeys natural laws 
finds that much more light is spread on his path and 
traveling along is ever so much more comfortable. 



One of the late Theodore Roosevelt’s expressions 
was, “ I work hard and play hard.” There is no 
reason why you shouldn’t indulge in the outdoor 
sports that appeal to you most. Go fishing, play 
baseball, tennis, golf, work in your garden, do any 
of the things that appeal to you. Recreation should 
really recreate, make you stronger, better, richer, 
healthier, more efficient. 

But after you have finished playing, settle down 
on the job and give to it the same concentrated 
attention that you give to the sport that pleases you 
most. 



In my time I have known many men and women 
who in the eyes of the world were important per¬ 
sonages, but I’m going to admit publicly that those 
with whom I have had the best times have in the 
world’s eyes, been people of no special importance. 


[104 3 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Success Through Sorrow 

Unless a man has had his hour in the Garden of 
Gethsemane and has felt the crown of thorns press¬ 
ing against his brow, he has missed some of the big 
things of life. It is only through sorrow that true 
success is ever reached. 



The test of the strength of a man in the Paleozoic 
time was a test of physical power. The test of a tribe 
was a physical test, but when they got through sprawl¬ 
ing through the ooze and the slime they developed 
brains, and prowess and not physical strength felt the 
bull influence on the stock market. 

We are just beginning to place moral strength 
above intellectual as long ago the latter took the 
lead of the physical. We have learned that nothing 
is more practical than a high, clearly defined ideal 
of service to our neighbors. 



“ Just think of the good a successful man could 
do,” says J. Edgar Park, “ if only hard luck had 
softened him a little.” 


c 1053 



The Silver Lining or 


There May Be No Tomorrow 

Here is a poem, the name of whose author we do 
not know. All we can do is think kindly of the un¬ 
known friend who wrote these lines: 

During all the years since time began, 

Today has been the friend of man; 

But in his blindness and his sorrow 
He looks to yesterday and tomorrow. 

Forget past trials and your sorrow. 

There was, but is, no yesterday. 

And there ma\ he no tomorrow. 



The one sure way to escape ingratitude is to do 
good without expecting gratitude as your reward. 
If you do not get your joy out of the act of self- 
expression you cannot find it elsewhere. 


C 106] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Slow Town 

Julian Street tells of a town down South in 
which a lady of his acquaintance stopped her motor, 
and asked the men what time it was. They stared 
blankly at her a moment, after which one of them 
said seriously, ‘‘ We don’t know. We don’t have 
time here.” 

Of course, the story is told by Mr. Street to show 
how slow some of those towns are, but are any of 
us so sure that their slowness is not quite as valuable 
as our terrible strenuousness and speed? Are we 
getting more of the essential things out of our lives 
than they are out of theirs? Is extreme busyness 
an unalloyed virtue? 

Perhaps we would be better off if we did more 
quiet thinking and less rushing hither and thither. 



People who have the reputation for saying bril¬ 
liant and witty things no longer interest me as much 
as they used to. Now I prefer those good, clean, 
wholesome, creative persons who spend most of their 
time doing useful work in the world and who are 
too wise to be cynical or tiresomely brilliant. 


L 107 H 




The Silver Lining or 


My Friend) The Star 

When I am tempted to entertain an exaggerated 
opinion of my own importance, my good friend, the 
star Betelgeuse, comes to my assistance. In its 
quiet way it reminds me that I don’t amount to so 
very much after all. It restores to me my sense of 
proportion. I cannot feel big in the presence of a 
star whose diameter is 260,000,000 miles or more 
than 300 times that of the sun, and 32,000 times 
that of the earth. When I stop to think about my 
size as compared with the earth’s, and then remember 
that Betelgeuse in volume is 33,000,000 times that 
of the earth, I become cool and calm and only 
reasonably egotistical. An Indian girl told me that 
once Indian mothers often put their crying children 
out to look at the stars. We ought to have sense 
enough to put ourselves out when we are fretful, 
or uneasy, or when we think we are so important that 
the world would have difficulty getting along with¬ 
out us. 




CioS] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Men and Electric Eels 

The electric eel, which attains a length of three 
feet and the thickness of a man’s thigh, has a natural 
battery that is sufficiently powerful to stun the largest 
animal. After its electricity is discharged, however, 
it becomes defenseless and timid. It is only after 
long rest and after abundance of food that it re¬ 
gains its power. How like the electric eel a business 
man is! He plunges in with all his force and ex¬ 
hausts it against the obstacles that oppose his progress, 
but if he is wise and takes vacations when he needs 
them, his power comes back and he can again go 
at his work with new strength. 



There is no use in wasting time because of losses 
we have sustained, because of plans gone wrong, be¬ 
cause of griefs and sorrows that visit us. Back of 
every act stands a long line of causes, most of them 
having never been within our control. All we can 
do is to trust ourselves completely to the universe and 
accept what comes as part of the great game. We 
are always being used in the working out of a plan 
— a plan governed by unchanging laws. 


1:1093 


I 



The Silver Lining or 


Is Life Worth Living? 

No MATTER what our position in the world may 
be, no matter whether we are financially successful 
or financially failures, at some time or other we ask 
ourselves that question which has been asked by so 
many millions of men and women before us: Is life 
worth living? 

Usually it is when we are tired that this question 
haunts us. When we are rested the world looks 
good. Life appears to us as a splendid thing. We 
think of it as a great adventure. 

But when we are tired, because of the drudgery of 
our household, or because of the problems that perplex 
us in our business offices, then the great question 
comes up and we seek for an answer. 

The next time that question stares you in the face 
answer it with these words by some poet whose name, 
unfortunately, is unknown to us: 

Life? and worth living? 

Yes, with each part of us — 

Hurt of us, help of us, hope of us, heart of us, 
Life is worth living. 

Ah! with the whole of us. 

Will of us, brain of us, senses and soul of us. 

Is life worth living? 

Aye, with the best of us. 

Heights of us, depths of us — 

Life is the test of us! 

n >io3 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Give Subordinates a Chance 

John D. Rockefeller was not a man to clutter 
up his mind with details. He trusted his subordinates. 
One day he was talking to George D. Rogers, who 
was the first stenographer of the Standard Oil Com¬ 
pany and who later became Mr. Rockefeller’s finan¬ 
cial secretary. Mr. Rockefeller said, “ Mr. Rogers, 
do you know that I have not been in the Standard 
Oil building in six years? ” 

“ Yes, Mr. Rockefeller,” replied Mr. Rogers, 
“ This is only the fourth time this year that I have 
talked with you face to face.” 

‘‘ Do you know,” went on Mr. Rockefeller, “ I 
believe that I am of just as much value to the com¬ 
pany as if I were down at the office every day 
bothering with details that others can attend to.” 

Some executives who are standing in the way of 
their subordinates may get a valuable lesson from this. 
Subordinates cannot grow if the chief insists on 
hanging around every day for the purpose of making 
all-important decisions. 





The Silver Lining or 


They Need Cross Breeding 

It is a well known fact that in long periods of 
security the herd instinct becomes weak. But when 
danger threatens the whole herd comes together for 
defensive purposes. 

We were thinking about this recently when we had 
occasion to watch some manufacturers working 
together in a defensive way because they were having 
labor troubles. They had not had the foresight to 
get together for offensive purposes before the trouble 
was upon them. 

When we use the term “ offensive purposes ” we do 
not mean the foolish old kind of warfare. We 
mean they should have come together long before 
there was any threat of trouble for the purpose of 
making their workers so satisfied that no trouble 
could possibly arise. 

One funny thing about business men is their habit 
of taking defensive positions so often. They appear 
before legislative committees for the purpose of 
objecting to something they do not like. That they 
might get together with the fellows on the other side 
long before the bill had been drawn up and get a 
law that would be satisfactory to both sides seems to 
enter their minds all too seldom. We sometimes 
think that employers should be grateful to agitators 
who stir up strife. It gives the employers a chance 

CiiO 




Sunshine on the Business Trail 


to get together for the purpose of talking over matters 
of mutual concern. It also brings them in touch 
with the ideas of labor. 

The trouble is employers herd together and workers 
herd together. They need a little cross breeding for 
the best interests of all. 



There is such a thing, you know, as paying too 
much for your money. What good is a million 
dollars to you when your friends peek at you through 
a glass and murmur, “ Doesn’t he look natural! ” 
Many a man struggles all his life to arrive, and then 
finds that there’s nowhere else to go, and the place 
he’s arrived at isn’t one-two-three with some of the 
places he passed by when the “ Go Slow ” signs meant 
nothing to him. Live today. Sleep is the finest of 
indoor sports. It is better than fine gold and precious 
stones. You get it when you live one day at a time, 
play square with yourself, be at least ordinarily neigh¬ 
borly, laugh a bit now and then, and live so that the 
man who works with you all the year round thinks 
you are a good fellow. If you do these things you’ll 
have mighty few worries and you’ll know what long 
life and happiness really are. 


C 113 3 



The Silver Lining or 


The Bluffer 

He is called the bluffer because he hasn’t had sense 
enough to put into practice in his own life Eben 
Holden’s advice, to “ under-estimate his horse a leetle 
for the sake of a reputation.” He hasn’t discovered 
that the simple truth makes the most powerful sales 
argument. He drives a car he cannot afford because 
he thinks he needs it to make an impression, thereby 
advertising that appearances count more with him than 
substance. In talking with him one is conscious all 
the time that he has nothing in reserve. The sad 
thing about it all is that he doesn’t need to bluff in 
order to be successful, and people would have more 
respect for him instead of standing off smiling at his 
antics and his speeches. 



The only success worth striving for is that which 
will give us peace and happiness. 



The gods are known to each other. So are the 
devils. Friends come to us naturally at the command 
of our thoughts. The quality of our thoughts de¬ 
termines the quality of our associates. 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Are You Saving? 

When you read the histories of most of the manu¬ 
facturing companies of the world you will find that 
they were started by someone who knew how to work 
hard and was thrifty. All these men may have had 
at the start was a few hundred dollars, but if they 
hadn’t had the few hundred dollars they never could 
have started business at all. 

Even a man who goes into business with a pushcart 
must have some capital, else he cannot buy the cart 
nor his little stock of goods. 

In the early days John D. Rockefeller kept a 
record of every cent he spent, and he never spent a 
cent unnecessarily. 

Andrew Carnegie got his start by saving what he 
could out of his small wages and investing it 
wisely. 

Men are starting fortunes today exactly the same 
way. 

Are you saving or spending? 


Ciis] 



The Silver Lining or 


The Secret of Success 

Here is the secret that changed a young man from 
an ordinary success into a great industrial leader. 
The interesting thing about this secret is its simplicity. 
You can use it right where you are. It doesn’t 
matter how old you are, where you live, what your 
work is — whether you are banker, farmer, merchant, 
clerk, laborer or manufacturer. And the secret 
which in one year changed a very ordinary salesman 
into state manager for a big business was stated over 
400 years before Christ by the teacher of Alexander 
the Great, Aristotle. 

Aristotle said: “All men seek one goal: Happi¬ 
ness. Happiness (which is true success) can be 
found only through expressing all one’s physical, 
mental, and spiritual power in usefulness to others.” 

But that is too general. The advisor of the young 
salesman took Aristotle’s three success essentials and 
said. 

“ First of all, you must have a definite, clearly- 
seen goal. You must know where you want to go. 
You must know what you want to do. You must 
pick a career. You want to be a farmer, a mer¬ 
chant, a lawyer, a doctor, a druggist, a salesman, a 
manager — what? The hunter who shoots into the 
woods without aiming isn’t likely to bring home many 
deer. The boy who goes from job to job, from town 

[116] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


to town, without an aim, without purpose, cannot 
achieve success. You, for instance, are a salesman 
right now. What will you be a year from now? 
Five years from now? Like a railroad builder, you 
must have a plan. You must have a destination. 

“ Second, you must get the materials you need 
which will help you reach your goal — help you to 
do what you want to do. You need health of body 
and mind. Your mind and your body make you a 
magnet. You attract what you are. If you have 
character, as J. P. Morgan said, you can get money. 
Banks will back you if you have backbone and brains. 
Friends will help you. If your desire is to serve 
others, the things you need to enable you to achieve 
your purpose will come to you, one at a time. A 
man with an idea plus character can get money with 
which to buy machines and build a factory, stock a 
store, or do whatever else he wants to do. Let him 
show others that he is thrifty, that he can save, that 
he has something worth while, and the things he 
needs will be his at the right time — provided he 
works with intelligence and purpose. 

“ Third, you must adjust your means to your end. 
That is, you must not bite off a pound when you can 
only chew an ounce. You must not hire ten men 
when one can do the work. You must not build a 
ten-story building when your business cannot use more 
than one room. You must not talk big and do little. 

n iiy] 



The Silver Lining or 


You must go ahead one step at a time — not attempt 
to jump a mile-wide gorge when your best running 
broad-jump record is less than 20 feet. You can set 
your goal as high as you please, but you must approach 
it steadily, surely, by definite, planned steps.” 

And that is all there is to the Secret of Success. 
Have a goal. Use what you have where you are to 
get what you need — and be sure to get what you 
need, and nothing that will hamper you later. Then 
use what you have wisely. 

When you have in your heart a desire to serve 
others you will be clean and straight and dependable. 
Men will trust their women and their money to your 
care. Unless they can do this, you are not a true 
success. 

With a definite service goal and a strong desire to 
give the world the best you have in you, all things 
are possible to you. You may be a cripple, you may 
be past your youth, you may be without money. But 
with a desire to serve and the common sense necessary 
to express that desire in a practical way, nothing can 
stop you. 

“ What man has done, man may do.” There 
always is a way through, under, over, or around 
whatever stands in your way. 

And always remember: It is the great giver who 
becomes the great getter. 


Ciis] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Why He Lost His Job 

A DEPARTMENT manager was asked recently to 
resign by his employer and when he left there was 
no one in the organization who was sorry to see him 
go. That explains why he was asked to resign. He 
had brains, knew how to do his work well, and might 
have been of great service to the organization if he 
had had sense enough to be interested in making 
friends. One of his troubles was that he felt him¬ 
self superior to many of his associates. As always 
happens, he received what he gave. Had he been 
appreciative of the work of others, had he shown 
any interest whatever in their affairs, they would 
have shared themselves with him, and when the 
crisis came, he would have had friends back of him 
instead of associates who were either indifferent or 
unfriendly. It is of first importance, of course, that 
a man should do good work, but part of doing good 
work consists in creating friendship. The man who 
makes friends is creating helpers who will do much 
to carve out his success for him. 



Just remember that the supply of good cannot 
be exhausted and you, if you are a worker and not 
a shirker, will get your share. 

[1193 



The Silver Lining or 


What Is A Friend? 

Two men were talking about friendship, and one 
of them had praised Emerson’s splendid essay. The 
other said, “ I don’t know what Emerson wrote on 
friendship, but I am willing to accept for myself 
the definition of a friend, written by some unknown 
writer, that I found somewhere the other day printed 
on a little slip of paper. Let me read it to you.” 

“ What is a friend? ” he read. “ I will tell you. 
It is a person with whom you dare to be yourself. 
Your soul can go naked with him. He seems to 
ask of you to put on nothing, only to be What you 
are. He does not want you to be better or worse. 

“ When you are with him you feel as a prisoner 
feels who has been declared innocent. You do not 
have to be on your guard. You can say what you 
think, so long as it is genuinely you. He understands 
those contradictions in your nature that lead others to 
misjudge you. 

“ With him you breathe free. You can take off 
your coat and loosen your collar. You can avow 
your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious 
sparks, your meanness and absurdities, and in opening 
them up to him they are lost, dissolved on the white 
ocean of his loyalty. He understands. You do not 
have to be careful. 

“You can abuse him, neglect him, tolerate him. 

n *203 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Best of all, you can keep still with him. It makes 
no matter. He likes you. He is like fire that purges 
all you do. He is like water that cleanses all that you 
say. He is like wine that warms you to the bone. 
He understands. 

“ You can weep with him, laugh with him, sin 
with him, pray with him. Through and underneath 
it all he sees, knows, and loves you. 

“ A friend, I repeat, is one with whom you dare 
to be yourself.” 



If you have advanced ideas on any subject, do not 
expect popular applause. The people seldom approve 
the pioneer. You must get your joy not from the 
cheers of the populace, but from self-expression. If 
your ideas are worth while and you have confidence 
in their value to the world, the approval of the multi¬ 
tude will be a matter of supreme indifference to you. 


How grateful we are to those men and women we 
meet along the vagabond trail of life who open our 
eyes to the goodness that is in us. How thankful we 
are to those who give us the courage to announce 
publicly our love for the best. 


c 12' n 



The Silver Lining or 


Your Savings Account Speaks 

Everything we do or fail to do advertises to the 
world what kind of folks we are. People who let 
their savings accounts go for months without 
adding a dollar to them may be too unfortunate to 
spare the money, but the chances are that they are 
neglectful and are wasting the money that ought to 
be saved. 

The depositor who is a regular saver advertises 
to us that he or she' has character and knows the 
wisdom of working forward through life with a 
definite plan in mind. 

No success is built without a plan that is followed 
through. Your savings account cannot grow unless 
you give it regular, constant, devoted care. 

What is your savings account telling us about you? 



Sometimes it is well for us to get far away from 
our regular daily work so that we can see it in 
perspective. To look back upon it gives us an op¬ 
portunity to see its strength and weaknesses. We see 
what is important and what is less important. It 
makes us kinder and simpler and increases our faith. 


C 122] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Golden Scarecrow 

There are, as many men have observed before, 
two classes of people in the world. One class is 
made up of men and women with imagination, gener¬ 
ous impulses and warm hearts who find more good 
than evil in the people they meet. The other class is 
made up of men and women without vision, soured in 
disposition, poor in heart because they have no gener¬ 
ous impulses, who look upon the world as a place 
where most things are wrong and most persons evil. 

How much better it is to have adventures like the 
characters in Hugh Walpole’s, “ The Golden Scare¬ 
crow.” Read this adventure: 

“ To their left a dark brown field rose in an 
ascending wave to a ridge that cuts the sky. 

“ The field was lit with the soft light of the 
setting sun. On the ridge of the field something 
suspended, it seemed in mid-air was shining like a 
golden fire. 

“ ‘ What’s that? ’ said Mr. Pidgen again. ‘ It’s 
hanging. What the devil! ’ 

“ They stopped for a moment, then started across 
the field. When they had gone a little way, Mr. 
Pidgen paused again. 

“ ‘ It’s like a man with a gold helmet. He’s 
got legs. He’s coming to us.’ 





The Silver Lining or 


‘‘ They walked on again. Then Hugh cried 
‘ Why it’s only an old scarecrow. We might have 

“ The sun, at that instant, sank behind the hills 
and the world was grey.” 

In the end, it is true, it was only an old scare¬ 
crow, but for one wonderful, glowing moment it 
was a man with a gold helmet — something to stir 
the imagination, to make the blood flow more 
quickly, to help to fill the whole world with a new 
glory. 

For our own selfish sakes, if for no other, should 
we not welcome all new friends as if they wore 
shining armor? In the end, of course, some of them 
may turn out to be scarecrows and little more. But 
suppose they do. If only for a short time they have 
the power to thrill us, to make us feel bigger, to 
awaken in us new desires and higher aspirations, they 
have served a great purpose, and having done that, 
they deserve our thanks. 

Even if they do drop out of our lives, even if 
some of them disappoint us, let us remember them 
as they appeared to us in those golden moments when 
we were rich in the belief that they wore shining 
armor. 

When we are most generous to our friends and 
to the world we are most genferous to ourselves. 



Cih] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Source of Inspiration 

Lafcadio Hearn wasted much of his life be¬ 
wailing the fact that inspiration would not come to 
him and enable him to write. He did much good 
work, but he could have done much more had he 
not spent so much of his time and energy writing 
about his inability to find perfect conditions. The 
weather was too hot or too cold. His environment 
was wrong. When he was in Cincinnati he wanted 
to be in New Orleans. When in New Orleans the 
West Indies attracted him. Even Japan, where he 
did his best work, was described in some of his letters 
as a hateful place. 

The man who loves his work does not worry about 
receiving inspiration from outside himself. I like 
to think about the workmanlike way a painter 
friend of mine goes about things. Give him materials 
with which to work, good light and freedom from 
interruptions, and he asks little more from the Fates. 
There is no telephone in his studio. Visitors (when 
the light is good) probably do not receive a hearty 
welcome. In his life work comes first. That is 
why he is such a great producer. 

When I was at his studio up on the hill, and 
realized how free he is from interruptions, I confess 
I envied him. I thought of the countless interrup¬ 
tions to which I am subjected daily — telephone calls, 

C 125 ] 



The Silver Lining or 


visits from people I never saw before and will never 
see again (agents for this, that, or the other thing), 
and the few delightful interruptions of worth-while 
men and women, who bring so much joy and good 
cheer into our office. Of course, sustained work can¬ 
not be done under such conditions. But there is 
nothing to prevent me from going home where I 
can be free. 

I have found that when I eat, sleep and exercise 
sanely, I have all the inspiration I need. Late hours 
are not for me. I have fewer and fewer evening 
engagements. When I want to see friends, I go to 
lunch with them. Banquets, parties, hotel dinners 
have no attraction for me. When I go to the theatre 
I would rather go with my wife than any one else in 
the world. We have good times together. I never 
have business engagements Saturday afternoons nor 
Sundays. By guarding my time and energy I manage 
to get done an amount of work that astonishes those 
who know what our office sends forth. 

Give me health and a rested mind and body and 
I have all the inspiration I need. 


1:126] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


What Does It Profit a Man? 

Three years ago a friend of a brainy, ambitious, 
hard-working New England business man urged him 
to let up on his everlasting day-and-night work. 

His wife added her pleas to those of the family 
friend. “ We used to have such wonderful times,” 
she said, trying to smile, “ but that was before we 
got rich. Do you know,” she went on, her voice 
vibrant with feeling, “ I would give every dollar we 
have if we could only have our old dreams back.” 

Her husband laughed. “ I know it is hard on 
you,” he said, “ but in a little while I’ll have this 
pesky business where I want it and then we’ll have 
a real vacation — just like the ones we used to have 
when I worked for a salary and was rich enough 
to take two whole weeks every summer.” 

He wouldn’t stop working. The pleadings of his 
wife, the advice of his friends, — nothing kept him 
from driving himself and everyone else. 

Most of the time he was irritable. He didn’t get 
sufficient rest. After a long day in the office, he 
would bring papers home with him and after dinner 
would shut himself up in his room and figure and 
plan for hours. 

His children never knew what it was to play with 
him. As a matter of fact he played with no one. 


c 127 3 



The Silver Lining or 


He tried to explain that his business was his pleasure. 
But anyone looking at his face knew that he was 
being driven by his business and it was not being 
driven by him. 

When things shaped themselves so there was a 
chance to let up a bit, he would reach out for more 
and pile more obligations upon himself and his 
organization. 

His name was printed in the newspapers and men 
who went home to their wives and romped with their 
kids used to envy him. 

And the wives of these men envied his wife be¬ 
cause she drove her own car and had twelve servants 
to minister to the needs of her home. 

His wife couldn’t make this man stop. His friends 
couldn’t. 

Yet, perhaps to his own surprise and it may have 
been to his relief, he did stop working the other day. 

Death stopped him. 


C128 3 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


YoiTll Find Comfort In Reading History 

A FEW days ago at the Boston City Club a business 
man who really ought to know better was talking 
most pessimistically about the world and about his 
own particular business. There was no light any¬ 
where. All around were great gobs of gloom. Joy 
was a thing of the past. Never again would there be 
industrial or any other kind of peace. Business had 
gone to the demnition bowwows and was going to 
stay there. 

The trouble with this man, and other men who 
think^ and talk like him, is that they are living too 
much in the present. The penny held up to their 
eye obscures the sun. What they need is to read 
history, and, fortified with the lessons taught by the 
past, look forward to the kind of world they desire. 
For men do get what they desire, and in just the 
measure of that desire. Men actually think things 
into existence. In our slip-shod, hit-or-miss way 
we wobble about the world worshipping material 
substances and paying no attention whatever to the 
creative power of thought. 

The world we live in is, when we analyze it, 
the world in which we think we live. There are as 
many worlds as there are persons. Your world 
difipers from mine and mine from yours. Our City 


C129II 



The Silver Lining or 


Club friend lived, for a time at least, in a world 
of gloom, in a world where natural law had ceased to 
operate creatively. Others, more philosophic, realize 
that the troubles of today are but temporary, and 
that out of the things that seem wrong much good 
will come in time. 

Few things continue to be bad in the presence of 
men who want things right. You remember the 
story of the man who led a very wicked life. He 
was so bad that when he died he went straight to 
hell. He found himself in a wonderful city, with 
paved streets, tall shade trees, splendid buildings, and 
. evidences of a culture which filled him with astonish¬ 
ment. The hell of fire and brimstone which he had 
expected to find was not there. Just then he met 
Bob Ingersoll whom he had known in this life. 

“ I thought you were in hell,’’ exclaimed the new¬ 
comer. 

“ I am,” answered Bob. “ This is Hell.” 

“ This can’t be Hell,” said the newcomer in 
astonishment. “ I thought Hell was a place of pain 
and misery, with devils sticking spears into sinners, 
and' all that. This Hell isn’t like that.” 

“ No,” answered Bob, with the pride of a promi¬ 
nent citizen who had helped do something for his 
community, ‘‘ but you should have seen the damned 
place when we got hold of it.” 


C130] 



Sunshine on the Business Trad 


Over a period of years a man’s life, a man’s busi¬ 
ness, the community in which he lives, is what he 
desires it to be. In my own town of Winchester, 
where there are parks and pleasure drives, there were 
tannery yards a quarter of a century ago. The 
tanneries went because beauty-loving residents saw in 
the Mystic Lakes something finer than tannery 
dumps. The town changed because the men who 
lived in it changed their thinking. 

As I said, what we need to do today is to read 
history. Read what Nehemiah did to rebuild Jeru¬ 
salem. The city was almost a ruin. Inspired by 
a great love, Nehemiah asked permission of Arta- 
xerxes, in whose court he was cup-bearer, to re¬ 
build it. His people were scattered. Only a handful 
of the old crowd remained. Enemies without did 
not want to have the place restored. But Nehemiah, 
blessed with the vision of the city as he wanted it, 
talked to the people and inspired them. With great 
wisdom he divided the workers so that in rebuilding 
the wall each man was set to work on that part of the 
wall nearest his own home. That meant he would 
not slight his task. Thus did Nehemiah tie selfishness 
into the great community scheme. Most bad things 
become good when rightly used. 

We will find a few years from now that during 
this period of reconstruction much good came into 


C i3« 3 



The Silver Lining or 


existence which without the troubles of the present 
could never have been created. ' Pain generally 
attends childbirth. 

Suppose before we lose heart we wait and see what 
happens. Whilst waiting let us read history. 
There is comfort in the past for those of us who 
think there is too much darkness in the present. 



Marcus Aurelius offered special thanks to those 
friends who had made their gifts and contributions 
to him in terms of candor, fairness, justice, stead¬ 
fastness, courage, dignity, benevolence and simple 
piety, rather than to those who made gifts to him in 
material form. From those who had bidden him to 
be a man to the full height of his stature, he received 
most. In your own experience haven’t you been most 
grateful to those who have helped you to become 
better, more courageous, more kindly, and more use¬ 
ful to your fellowmen? 


C 132] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


Reading Biographies 

Unless you are reading the lives of the men and 
women who have made history you are denying your¬ 
self one of the greatest pleasures of life. , 

Not only are you denying yourself pleasure, but 
you are robbing yourself of inspiration and ideas 
that would help you increase your success, no matter 
how successful you may be at the present moment. 

It isn’t at all necessary for you to read uninterest¬ 
ing books. Stories of the lives of men and women 
in all walks of life who have done work that is 
worth while, that has helped to make the world a 
better place, are far more interesting than novels. 

If you have not found out for yourself the 
pleasure of reading biographies, give yourself that 
chance now. 



Most wise persons are a curious combination of 
wisdom and ignorance. 


C 133] 



The Silver Lining or 


How Hoover Ended Useless Talk 

Sometimes when I am forced to listen to long- 
winded after dinner speakers who say nothing, or 
attend committee meetings where the chairman lets 
those present wander all over the lot, I wish it were 
possible to have concealed somewhere around the place 
a boy with sense enough to do what Herbert Hoover 
did when he was working in his uncle’s real estate 
office in Oregon. 

The company was in financial difficulties and a 
meeting was held one night to find out what ought 
to be done. Each of the men present was trying 
to protect himself, and there was much loud talk 
and calling of names. 

When hot words were flying back and forth the 
light suddenly went out. The angry fighters united 
in complaining against the gas company. 

They couldn’t carry on the meeting in the dark 
so they stumbled out of the office and went home. 

When Uncle John was about to lock up, young 
Bert appeared and the uncle asked, “ Bert! Did thee 
turn out the lights? ” 

“ They were only running up the gas bill,” 
answered Bert, “ There was no use in that kind of 
talk.” 

That’s what our radical friends would call an 
example of direct action. 

1:134] 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


An Invisible Force 

One time the managing editor of a well-known 
publication asked a man, “ Ever have your hat 
blown oif? ” 

“ Yes,’* said the merchant. 

“ What blew it off? ” 

“ The wind.” 

“ Did you ever see the wind?” 

No.” 

“ Well, advertising is like the wind — an in¬ 
visible force. You can’t see it but you can and 
will see the results just as you saw your hat go 
rolling down the street.” 


“ If the mind is occupied and full ^f big things,” 
said some very wise person, “ it doesn’t give the body 
a chance to be ill long. You can’t be ill if your 
brain is healthy.” 



There are many things worse than poverty. The 
wise men of the world know that the lamp of the 
soul is extinguished quite as effectively by wealth as 
it is by lack of means. No man should possess more 
than he can animate. 


i:>353 



The Silver Lining or 


Hitting Them Right 

All of us who are amateur golfers have days 
when we hit them out straight and true and other days 
when we flub shot after shot and seemingly have no 
control whatever over our clubs. 

I was reading in the papers the other day a story 
of a Chicago professional named McDonald, who 
in testing out some steel clubs, was asked to flub 
some of his shots. 

Try as he would it seemed impossible for him 
not to hit his balls as they ought to be hit. 

The reason McDonald couldn’t flub his shots was 
because he had trained himself to hit the ball right 
and he found it just as hard to break himself of a 
right habit as most of us who are learning the game 
have trying to break ourselves of wrong habits. 

What cheers me up is the thought that in time I 
myself may be able to drive with machine-like 
accuracy. Certainly the average man doesn’t have 
to continue to be a dub unless he wants to be. 

What is true in the world of golf applies with 
equal force to life as a whole. 

If our desire is strong enough and if we work 
hard enough and work in the right way, of course, 
almost any art can be mastered. 


1:1363 



Sunshine on the Business Trail 


LincolrTs Revenge 

Today I heard one man telling another how he 
had revenged himself upon another man who had 
olfended him. It wasn’t a nice story. The speaker, 
however, apparently was proud of what he had done. 

As I walked away I could not help thinking of 
what Lincoln did to Chase. Although a member 
of the Cabinet, Chase had been one of the bitterest 
critics of Lincoln and his administration. When he 
retired from the Cabinet he was still more bitter. 
He went about the country trying his best to poison 
the minds of the people against the president. 

Then Chief Justice Roger Taney died. To the 
surprise of everyone who knew the facts, the presi¬ 
dent nominated Chase for the position. 

When a friend said something to Lincoln about his 
magnanimity, Lincoln replied that he had always 
meant to appoint Chase and only one doubt had 
been holding him back. He had wondered whether 
Chase, craving the presidency as he did, would ever 
really turn his attention to becoming the kind of chief 
justice that Lincoln thought he could be. 

You will note that'in all this Lincoln apparently 
paid no attention whatever to the harm Chase had 
done him. He overlooked those imperfections in 
the man who in other respects was fit to hold the 


C137] 



The Silver Lining or 


place at the head of the Supreme Court of the 
United States. 

What we need in our business as well as our 
political life is a greater number of men who will 
adopt the Lincoln form of revenge when they are 
tempted to get even with someone who has done evil 
to them. 



It is curious, isn’t it, that a business man, who, 
when he goes into the woods, will be careful not to 
overload his guide, will think nothing at all of heap¬ 
ing work upon his subordinates that robs their days 
of all joy. The real good sportsman knows that there 
is no difference between the principles of good sports¬ 
manship and the principles of good business manage¬ 
ment. 



True happiness can only be known through 
abandonment. 



Most houses, even in the world of business, are 
judged by their representatives. 





Sunshine on the Business Trail 


The Art of Listening 

One statement in the life of Albert Einstein that 
interested me greatly is this: “ He is master of the 
art of listening.” When a statement is made with 

which he does not agree he does not rush forward 

• 

to contradict it. He gives the speaker an opportunity 
to state his whole case without interruption. He keeps 
his mind open. If you think this is a simple thing 
to do just try it for one day. I’ll bet anything you 
can count on your fingers the number of big business 
men in New York who do it. They listened when 
they were younger, but now that they have achieved 
success they think it is unnecessary for them to listen 
any more. The man who refuses to listen is afflicted 
with a swelled head whether he realizes it or not. 



One of my daily prayers: 
O God! 



Make me lovable, 


The only true religion is the religion of Love. 


C1393 



I 



INDEX 








INDEX 


A 


Advertising. 

Advice. 

Anticipation plus Realization. 

Applause ... 

Are You an Elephant? . 

Are You Doing What You Want To Do? 

Arguments . 

Aristotle . 

Art of Listening, The. 

Associates. 

Avoiding People. 


PAGE 

90, 125 
...98 
. . . 40 
. . 121 
... 67 
... 94 
... 89 
70, 116 

• • 139 

,... 71 
. .. 65 


B 


Barrie, Sir James . 96 

Be a Mixer . 96 

Bee, The . 88 

Believing the Impossible . 60 

Best Business Man, The. lOi 

Biographies, Read.. 133 

Bluffer, The. 114 


C143II 




















' Index 


PAGE 

Bok, Edward. 98 

Brilliant People . 107 

Business Man’s Prayer, A. vii 

By-Law, The . 85 

C 

Capitalize Your Curiosity. 66 

Carnegie, Andrew.. . 93, 115 

Caeser, Julius.*,. 45 

Changes . 95 

Cherry Pie, A Piece of . 23 

Cities . 66 

Competitors . 82 

Confidence in Others. 74 

Conversationalists . 87 

Cooperation . 67, 112 

Courage . 64 

Cross-Breeding . 112 

Curiosity . . . .. 66 

D 

Daily Desire. 69 

Days of Gold, The. 97 

Devil of. Fear, The . 30 

t 

E 

Egotist . 98 

Einstein, Albert . 139 

ni44ii 

























Index 


PAGE 

Enjoying Little Things . 58 

Executives. 12, 61, 74, 79, 84 

Experience Taught Me This. 80 


F 

Faith. 

Fear .. 

Field, Marshall . 

Folks Who Fear Lighthouses 

Fragrant Life, The . 

Freedom . 

Friendly Work, The. 

Friends.. 


. 82 

. 28, 30 

. 35 

. 75 

. 82 

. 59 

.'• • • 58 

72, 119, 120, 123 


G 

Generosity . 9 * 

Gifts... 132 

Goal . 116 

Golden Scarecrow, The . 123 

Gould, Jay. 98 

Gratitude . 106 

Grant, General. 3 ® 

“ Great Sharer, The ” . 82 


H 


I, 81, 89, 93, 97, 


136 

113 

45 


Habits.. 

Happiness. 

Harriman, J. H 


• Ci4S3 

























Index 


PAGE 

Hearn, Lafcadio. 125 

Helping Others . 80 

Helpfulness . 42 

History, Read. 129, 133 

Hitting Them Right . 136 

Home Element in Business. 92 

Hood, Thomas. 43 

Hoover, Herbert. 134 

Human Chemicals . 12 

Hurts . 78 

I 

Ideals . 83 

Imagination . 80 

Important Personages. 104 

Inspiration . lO, 60, 125 

Invading Host, The. 71 

Invisible Advertisment, The . 90 

Invisible Force, An. 135 

Is Life Worth Living? . iio 

J 

Joy . 27 

K 

Keys to Success Town, The. 102 

L 

Leverhulme, Lord . 26 

Life . no 

C1463 

























Index 


PAGE 

Lincoln, Abraham. 137 

Listening . 139 

Loafing... 92 

Lovers of Good . 87 

M 

Magic of Thought . 100 

Making Money Happily . 81 

Making of an Executive, The . 61 

Marden, Orson Swett. 36 

Men and Electric Eels. 109 

Men Who Are Rich. 26 

Millionaires without Millions . i 

Mistakes . 97 

Money .113 

More Powerful than Kings. 74 

Morgan, J. P. 45> 

N 

Napoleon . 45 

Natural Laws . 1^3 

O 

Obstacles. 94 

Old-Timers . ^3 

Orders . 99 

Organizing Power . 93 


C1473 
























Index 


PAGE 

P 

Persistency . 95 

Physical Power. 105 

Play ., 96 

“ Playing Dead ” . 44 

Poetry, Inspiration of. lO 

Polisher of Lenses, A. 73 

Popular at Home. 59> 63 

Poverty. 135 

Poverty of Unawareness, The. 92 

Power to the Faint. 42 

R 

Reformers . 87 

Revenge . 137 

Rich Men. 26 

Right Lenses. 103 

Rights of Things and Persons. 75 

Rockefeller, John D. m, 115 

Rock Hauler, The. 78 

Roosevelt, Theodore. 82, 104 

S 

Sandpaper . 52 

.95, 115, 122 

Schwab, Charles M. ^8 

Secret of Success. 116 

Self-Expression . 67^ 69 




























Index 


PAGE 

Sermon on a Bee. 88 

Service ... . 70, 71, 90, 105 

Simple Tasks . 73 

Sins. 63 

Slowness . 107 

Slow Town, The . 107 

Sorrows. 27, 29, 105 

Source of Inspiration . 60, 125 

Speeches. 85, 134 

Sports . 104 

Sportsman . 138 

Stars . 108 

Stones in Their Shoes. 89 

Subordinates . ill 

Success.. 85, 93, 102, 104, 114, 116 

Suggestions . 77 

Sullivan, P. F. 99 


T 


Tail of the Burrow, The. 99 

Tale of Two Men, The. bo 

They Need Cross-Breeding . 11 2 

Thinking . *07 

Thought . ^ 

Thoughts . 72 

Tomorrow . ^ 

Trees and Men. 9 ^ 

Troubles . b 2 

Truest Freedom, The. 59 


D493 






























Index 


PAGE 

V 

Vacation... 40, 109 


W 

We Get What We Are ..... 

What Aristotle Said . 

What Does It Profit a Man? 

What Is A Friend? . 

When He Lost His Millions 

Why Have Ideals? . 

Why He Lost His Job .’. 

Why 1 Like to Play Dead . 
Why Try to be a Red Rag? . 

Why Worry? . 

Workers . 

'Working . .. 

Worry... 


70 

127 

120 

10 

83 

119 

44 

65 

86 

80 

127 

86 


Ciso] 

















A Forbes Book Jot Doers 

KEYS TO SUCCESS 

Personal Efficiency 

BY B. C. FORBES 

Editor, Forbes Magazine'' 

Author, "Forbes Epigrams," "Men Who Are Making America,"etc, 

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‘..I ■ 

























